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I think that's a great thing, because I really do think everyone has the potential to learn calculus (it's not that hard), and it's becoming increasingly required to gain admission into good schools, especially ones like UC. I don't think we should be setting up barriers to successful college careers when kids are only 10.
Bud...there are people who don't have the potential to learn algebra. I've spent some time in an urban community college, I've seen it first-hand. I'm sure that it's evident who has that potential and who doesn't by the age of 10.
Yes, we certainly want an entire nation of morons. That is something to aspire to--America's 21st century ambrosia. We wouldn't want anyone to excel at anything, thus making the class dunce feel bad about himself. We must embrace stupidity, slothfulness, and mediocrity (and wokeness) so as not to offend anyone.
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I'm not sure we need honors courses until Junior and Senior years of high school.
There is some benefit to having everyone in the same classroom. This is the value of public education - for those who are harder workers to be observed by those who don't work as hard. There's learning going on there, when students who routinely show up on time, with their homework complete and mostly correct, who read at their desk when told to, who pay studious attention to what's being done on the whiteboard, etc. There's also learning for those who are hardworking, seeing that some students who are less successful often have other very great qualities -creativity, honed social skills, etc.
Our elementary begins spooning off harder workers (by that, I mean to say parents who work to get their kids into TAG and work hard at home to make sure they successfully complete projects, etc) so that by the end of elementary school you have kids who consider themselves smart and those who consider themselves dumb. Which isn't usually true at all.
I do agree that reading groups in early elementary should still be staggered (with the traditional names like bluebirds and cardinals, but all the kids know what group they're in) because reading is fundamental, and each kid needs to be met at their level and taught.
Virginia, see Virginia moving to eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade as part of equity-focused plan (link) and CD thread Virginia eliminating accelerated math until 11th and 12th, and California, see In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Who Are Gifted at Math(link) are eliminating honors programs through Grade 10 and Grade 9, respectively. Excerpt:
One of two things will happen or both will happen:
Parents who want their children to get a real education will pull their children out of public schools, further reducing support for school programs and budgets; and/or
Japan, Singapore, Israel and China will laugh at us while they continue to educate their children.
All this while we emulate lemmings, destroying ourselves in the name of wokeness.
I say this once and only once. Two factions in America that teach oppression is the evangelical Christians and their Jesus, and the wokes with their critical theory. These two factions will tear and dumb down among America into oblivion.
Calculus, imo, is easier to learn than algebra. And I personally know plenty of people deemed unworthy of learning calculus at age 10 who would go on to master it later on, and there have been studies to suggest the potential to learn calculus is way more common than the current system would have you believe. It's why they're making the change in the first place. The problem isn't that people are incapable of learning but that our education system has failed a lot of people. The way we teach kids to think about math (or any subject, really) is pretty garbage. I've tutored kids at all levels and have never had a problem eventually getting through once I get them thinking on the right path.
But if you'd rather stick with the old ways and rob millions of children of the ability to learn college-essential math because they tested poorly in the fifth grade... that's an option, I guess.
I've taught math at a university for nearly thirty years now. I've had all kinds of awards and accolades from both students and departments. And I have to say I disagree with the first clause in your last little paragraph. You want to know why and how I've been successful? You want to know why I've had students every single semester for the past thirty years ask if I teach the next math class in their sequence?
It's because I teach math essentially the way it was taught over a hundred years ago. I realize that we all learn differently, but I've had the most success doing it that way. No gimmicks. No flavor of the month pedagogy. No fancy entertainment. No fancy new textbooks (yeah... how often does math change?). No new technology. Keep the online crap to a minimum.
A textbook. A pencil. Lots of homework and practice. And you sitting your butt in class every day paying attention to the lecture and asking question when you don't understand. Just like the year 1900. In fact, I could easily use the textbooks from 1900 (which would save the students hundreds of dollars). Sometimes newer isn't necessarily better.
I'm not sure we need honors courses until Junior and Senior years of high school.
There is some benefit to having everyone in the same classroom. This is the value of public education - for those who are harder workers to be observed by those who don't work as hard. There's learning going on there, when students who routinely show up on time, with their homework complete and mostly correct, who read at their desk when told to, who pay studious attention to what's being done on the whiteboard, etc. There's also learning for those who are hardworking, seeing that some students who are less successful often have other very great qualities -creativity, honed social skills, etc.
Not true at all. I've highlighted the important takeaway in bold:
Quote:
"While students in the bottom quartile have shown slow but steady improvement since the 1960s, average test scores have nonetheless gone down, primarily because of the performance of those in the top quartile. This "highest cohort of achievers," Rudman writes, has shown "the greatest declines across a variety of subjects as well as across age-level groups." Analysts have also found "a substantial drop among those children in the middle range of achievement"
...The contrast was stark: schools that had "severely declining test scores" had "moved determinedly toward heterogeneous grouping" (that is, mixed students of differing ability levels in the same classes), while the "schools who have maintained good SAT [Stanford Achievement Test, for grades K-12] scores" tended "to prefer homogeneous grouping [ability/skill-level grouping, aka tracking]."
If attaining educational excellence is this simple, why have these high-quality schools become so rare? The answer lies in the cultural ferment of the 1960s.
THE INCUBUS OF THE SIXTIES
In every conceivable fashion the reigning ethos of those times was hostile to excellence in education. Individual achievement fell under intense suspicion, as did attempts to maintain standards. Discriminating among students on the basis of ability or performance was branded "elitist." Educational gurus of the day called for essentially nonacademic schools, whose main purpose would be to build habits of social cooperation and equality rather than to train the mind."
Calculus, imo, is easier to learn than algebra. And I personally know plenty of people deemed unworthy of learning calculus at age 10 who would go on to master it later on, and there have been studies to suggest the potential to learn calculus is way more common than the current system would have you believe. It's why they're making the change in the first place. The problem isn't that people are incapable of learning but that our education system has failed a lot of people. The way we teach kids to think about math (or any subject, really) is pretty garbage. I've tutored kids at all levels and have never had a problem eventually getting through once I get them thinking on the right path.
But if you'd rather stick with the old ways and rob millions of children of the ability to learn college-essential math because they tested poorly in the fifth grade... that's an option, I guess.
So you know a lot of people who were bad at math when they were in the fifth grade, but then went on to be masters of calculus later on in life? Well....if you say so, I guess. But I'm skeptical. Were these the lowest-performing kids in some wealthy suburban district or something? Because I'm kind of from the hood, and the kids there who were bad at school were baaaaaad at school. Some people just aren't good at math, the same way that some people aren't good at singing or drawing or playing baseball or whatever else. I didn't make the cut to be on my middle school's basketball team. Was I "robbed" of a chance to be a good basketball player? Or was it obvious that I was unskilled at that game, and always would be?
Last edited by fat lou; 05-10-2021 at 09:35 AM..
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I've highlighted the important takeaway in bold:
