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Good write-up. There are no words in Elvish, Entish or the tongues of men that can accurately describe how resoundingly stupid, counterproductive and non-progressive this proposal truly is.

I am morbidly curious though. Does anyone know what these (presumably less burdened) teaching resources will now be put towards instead of the algebra classes?

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It is kind of amazing, it feels like ideas like these are just huge self-owns because it plays into the fears/beliefs of anyone who is even marginally further right than the center that most discussion of DEIB stuff is ridiculous and/or eye-rolling.

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According to the guest post linked at the top of the article, a “data science” class which isn’t really good for much.

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I took algebra in fucking 6 grade, calculus in 10th, and ended up getting degrees in math.

The reason I was ahead at math was because my older brother made me do his homework. so when I was in 5th grade I was doing his 8th grade alegebra homework. So in 6th grade I Was ready for algebra.

I mean, not everyone is going to have an 8th grade bully making them do their algebra. But even a fucking 5th grader can learn algebra.

Why is the progressive policy to just throw up your hands and give up?

Homeless people everywhere? Well, we just give up, let them setup camps outside.

Kids can't read? Give up, lower educational standards.

Everyone is obese? Give up, body positivity and "healthy at any size"

if I wracked my brain I could come up with 10 more of these

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What did your older brother end up doing? 😂

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Law school and the rest is history lol

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I have wondered how a school could be set up to have the older, or more advanced, students teach the younger students. I know that when I tutored calculus in high school I learned more about it, so I know the “teaching” students would gain too. One challenge I see is that some people are much more patient and are better at teaching, but perhaps those are skills that can be learned too…

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My elementary school was set up like that in the early 1970's. The kids that were ahead of the class spent half their time working in classes two or three grades down. Even as a twelve-year-old boy I found it very satisfying to help the younger kids learn and, as your post rightly notes, I learned a lot more about the subjects by teaching others than I thought I would.

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Thanks for the information. I would love to learn more about that school.

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In regard to “what led to this madness”: As a parent in a good school district in the Bay Area, I see that the most vocal white parents are overtly anti-academic, and very “student wellness” focused. I have to wonder if that has something to do with the fact that in school districts like ours, Asian students have been dominating academics for some time now. During certain types of parents’ meetings, the atmosphere created by these parents is such that it is very uncomfortable for immigrant parents like myself to voice any kind of support for academic rigor. The cultural divide is unmistakable. This may be one of the major factors in the recent anti-academic turn that coastal progressives have taken, which would not have been possible without the white majority getting onboard.

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I could not agree more. I’m in one of these Boston metro west suburbs and it feels like as soon as the Asians start outnumbering the whites in advanced classes, those classes end up being ‘terrible for mental health; so much pressure; let these kids have a childhood for Pete’s sake’. But wake up at 5 am to take your boy to hockey practice, drive to florida for soccer tournaments with his club team, drive into rush hour traffic every weekday for club volleyball power team...? Well, those are important skills for team building and spirit, don’t you know. Pah! Just admit you haven’t yet gotten used to the competition. So irritating.

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I suspect that there is some sort of tipping point when the fraction of “other,” students such as recent immigrants or Asian students reached that point, the phenomena you describe tends to occur.

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Would love to hear more on this:

"the recent anti-academic turn that coastal progressives have taken"

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Your observation is important, and makes me wonder whether Noah's insistence that this is the work of "progressives" is in fact a misinterpretation of what's happening. There's a strong anti-intellectual bias on the right, a quiet move to eliminate public schools in favor of for-profit schools (the DeVos family is funding many such efforts in states like Arizona), and a current very public drive to change school curricula to teach more of what parents on the right want their kids to believe.

The major push for these modifications is heightened activity in local school boards by "conservatives"; since few parents are highly active in that area, these squeaky wheels tend to have a disproportionate effect on local policy. This could be happening in your school too.

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Jul 18, 2023Liked by Noah Smith

Lovely piece Noah. Glad to see your passion.

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Every progressive needs to be made to admit that:

1. People are not created equal in ability and that denying this is akin to denying climate change

2. People and communities have agency and can better themselves. If they’re so upset that Asians go to exam prep classes, why can’t their designated victim communities create the same? There’s no law forbidding them from doing so.

3. The world does not owe their designated victims anything special.

4. They and their designated victims will deserve whatever backlash they engender if they continuously try to screw over everyone else in an idiotic attempt to equalize.

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A nicer version of this that always comes to my mind in these contexts is the Ratatouille lesson: anyone can cook. Not everyone can cook, but a good cook can come from anywhere. Same applies to math? Equality of opportunity was such a better goal than equity for this reason imo

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I’m in favor of more tracking in schools - people get streamed according to their abilities. It’s true that the vast majority of kids can be educated, but not to the same level. Programs like the one discussed basically dumb down everything to cater to the lowest common denominator, and that will lead to some combination of the following:

1. Talented kids can’t develop to their potential

2. Parents take their kids out of public schools in favor of more rigorous education

>often born to middle class privilege

I was born in a family that skipped meals so their kids could eat.

>inequality is to a large extent (although biology certainly plays a role, also undeserved btw) the result of social factors

Yes, some social factors do play a part, however there’s a diminishing returns effect for how much “remediation” leads to lower functioning societies. Some redistribution is necessary to avoid social unrest and plutocratic capture, but the latest ideas (such as dumbing down the curriculum, affirmative action, reparations etc) are on the unfavorable end of the CBA. It’s also telling that almost every attempt to create a perfectly equal society leads to suffering and failure.

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My idea for education reform would be Child Directed Education.

Starting about the last half of their K-12 years, so about grade 7, children should be given some decision-making ability over what they want to do in their adult years. Granted, many have not thought that far ahead and still need the structure of math, English and literature, science, athletics, etc., but K-12 schools should have the tools and coursework in place that if a kid says "I want to be [career]," they can start getting it as early as middle school.

For instance, many schools had dismantled home economics programs because they were patriarchal or irrelevant to modern society. In some high schools (these happened in multiple states and independent of each other), students were precocious foodies and had pressed their schools to bring back what was home economics, but this time repurpose the classes as culinary arts to put their skills to use outside of the home in foodservice careers.

Kids might find book learning boring or struggle with that style of learning, but might prefer their schooling involve something interactive. If they like video games, they could learn to create their own video games. Along the way, they will learn math, computer science, art, English (since there's a lot of non-coding writing like instruction manuals, a game narrative, storyboarding), etc. They'd enjoy the boring theoretical aspects of education when they'd have practical use for it.

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We had all this in my junior high and high schools in a Midwestern manufacturing city in the 1970's. We had standard and honors-track academic subjects, plus academic, language and vocational electives starting in 8th grade My high school had large and sophisticated metal and wood shops, a three-bay auto shop, a large kitchen for home economics (newly open to boys at that time), and secretarial courses. These were all highly relevant in a city with four major aircraft factories and many other manufacturing plants. I think this is all gone now. The football team is still highly competitive, though.

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When I was coming up in school in the early '90s, this was all gone or never existed. This was California, and everyone speaks of a paradise lost due to Proposition 13 when there might've been these programs, but Gen X got the "blackboard noir" treatment (schools were really like "Lean on Me," "Dangerous Minds, "187," etc.) and the priority in education was to stop us from crime and drugs.

Whatever vocational-focused courses had existed like wood and metal shop were attritioned and eliminated when the teacher retired or when the machinery broke and could no longer be serviceable.

I'm glad that younger generations have a more stimulative learning environment than my generation got.

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This was the case in Los Angeles in the early 1980s.

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In my city this occurred in the 90s as well. Relevant events include: the shift towards “everyone should go to college if they work hard enough” after which the one-stoplight towns on the edge of the city turned into affluent suburbs with top rated academic high schools while the city high schools deteriorated.

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The Boston Globe piece contains a *hint* of defensible logic: this is a post-pandemic response to the deplorable collapse of basic education during COVID. Implied but not stated here: Resources will be diverted to catch-up for kids who were left behind, not enrichment for those still doing well.

Sadly, I suspect this is an idea that preceded (and will outlast) the COVID years, but it may have found a critical mass just now.

The Globe is paywalled but the article is accessible through their Twitter link. Relevant passage:

"Cambridge school leaders say they can’t reinstate the advanced math classes in middle school: Many students continue to reel from pandemic-related learning losses and are not ready to take algebra 1 before high school, and offering it just for those who are prepared, they say, would only widen the persistent disparities of educational performance among subgroups.

“We have a huge focus on addressing both the academic achievement gaps and the opportunity gaps in our community,” said schools Superintendent Victoria Greer. “One thing the district is not interested in doing is perpetuating those gaps.”

Hmm. The achievment gap won't be a problem if we stop measuring it? This might be a solid approach for "solving" gun violence, traffic fatalities, or many other challenges.

Twitter link:

https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe/status/1680175717097656320

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Jul 18, 2023·edited Jul 18, 2023

Theater of the absurd. I love the meme by the way. As a former math teacher and tutor I guess we shouldn't confuse highly educated with rational. I will second the opinion that there was probably pressure "to do something" in Cambridge and they chose the easy solution. Knocking things down is always easier than building things back up - Entropy.

I remember reading a few years ago about the the university of Texas program meant to admit 10% of all students. The story I remember is of a Latina student enrolled in Calculus who struggled mightily, but through perseverance and dedication by her teachers and teaching assistants did well and went on to earn an engineering degree and got a job in her field. The take home message is that smart people are born everywhere and just need the opportunity and help. Just think of the gap in productivity and potential GDP we could close if we focused on this. Particularly now that we are desperate for highly educated and trained workers and entering a second cold war.

One only need to read the story of Ramanujan to see that.

https://apps.texastribune.org/price-of-admission/getting-to-graduation/

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The concept of entropy is not prescriptive. It doesn't recommend anything.

The thermodynamic concept of entropy implies that there is an arrow toward disorder -- living organisms die, but not vice versa; firewood cannot be unburned; something fragile like glass even if reassembled to its original shape before shattering will be structurally weaker than before it was broken.

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The inevitable effect of "equality of outcome" policies of any kind -- classic Marxism, utopian socialism, anti-racism, or any other -ism that seeks to equalize outcomes among groups or individuals -- is equality of misery.

I'm reading Freddie DeBoer's Cult of the Smart right now. Freddie is a die-hard socialist. But even he recognizes that excellence is incompatible with equality. In education particularly, there is a limit to how far the bottom may be brought up, but no limit on how far the top may be torn down. And if you're seeking equality, tearing down is the far easier of those two.

BTW: I assign Harrison Bergeron it to my HS civics students every year. It love that story. And thanks for the revised Equity comic. I'm using that in my class too.

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This piece feels like it's missing the point of view of the progressives pushing this legislation. The argument towards creating equity through watering down public education feels so dumb as it's presented here that I have to assume there's more to it. No?

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Who cares what their own reasoning is when it's such an obviously dumb and harmful idea?

I don't get why we're still insisting on giving progressives the benefit of the doubt on obviously-moronic ideas after so many spectacular failures of these progressive ideas since 2020.

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There isn’t. They’re just idiots with mush for brains whose reaction to everything is “but what about my pet victims?”

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Yeah, at this point this crap is just straight out of Harrison Bergeron. And I'm glad more and more people are realizing this, including on the sane parts of the left, but y'know many of us recognized it as dangerous nonsense right away?

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>many of us recognized it as dangerous nonsense right away?

I’m left leaning and I thought it was nonsense from the start. I’m quite skeptical of most leftist ideas that have emerged since the BLM riots.

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Yep, despite being on the right myself I'm aware that there a number of lefties who have always been against this stuff. I was more referring to people on the left who initially fell for this stuff before realizing the insanity of it all. Perhaps I should have been more clear.

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Wait, I remember you from Slow Boring. Yea, it’ll take a lot more time before these stupid ideas are defeated (some may never be, good luck with trying to get university admins to stop trying AA through the back door).

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Yeah, maybe some progressive could step in here and steelman the rationale for us.

Historically, progressives have been engaged in a struggle against “fringe ideologues,” to use Noah’s term. Nowadays, fringe progressives have become the ideologues, rejecting all received cultural norms as illegitimate power hierarchies.

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The more math you know, the more you realize everything is math. Math is nothing but the science of regular patterns and once you start thinking mathematically, that habit starts to swallow everything and make everything easier to learn. I tutor my young kids and in teaching the younger one the calendar (the months of the year), I realized I was just teaching her an application of math as much as when I was teaching her to count by 10s. I took more or less a similar approach.

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Math reaches kids how to learn. Nobody is born with the ability to do math. If you can figure out how to do advanced math, you can figure anything out. We should be encouraging this. Loved the “opt out” policy they implemented in Dallas. Behavioral Economics at its finest!

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Thay may be true, but love for math is partly developed when you realize how it magically connects so many disparate concepts and this may depend on order of learning. With a math foundation, you may recognize the standard musical scale is just a base 7 repeating integer arrangement, and the lengths of measures, notes and rests are denoted using standard mathematical concepts. You may recognize that cooking recipes are just formulas and that you can adjust the amount produced by scalar multiplication on the ingredients. Without math, different domains are entirely disconnected in your mind.

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I think you know way more math than you realize, and this is probably a factor of always believing that you "aren't good at math", and so have never really sat down and reckoned with how integral math is to things.

You mention guitar, and it's funny because music theory has quite a bit of math. As does cooking, which is full of algebra, and I bet you perform algebra constantly even though you don't think you do. Like, literally taking a recipe and making a half portion is algebra. Things like "if this is 3 parts sugar and 2 parts brown sugar, how much brown sugar do I need to go with my 2 tablespoons of sugar?" is algebra.

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founding
Jul 18, 2023·edited Jul 18, 2023

It's not very popular to say this, but most of the difference in ability in school is heritable. Some say 60%, some say 80%. That's not to say that we shouldn't try and educate all kids as well as we can, but if every kid could learn advanced calculus we would teach it to them.

Dedicating resources in one area, say "teaching 8th graders algebra" inevitably removes it from another. Perhaps it should instead be dedicated to tutoring, I don't know. I personally think that tracking is fine, and that 8th graders should be allowed to take algebra.

But this idea that kids are just clay, ready to be molded into anything, if we just our education system was better is bunk. If there was a magic wand, we would have already found it. Freddie de Boer does a good job of eviscerating the typical "liberal" point of view that we can all be physics professors if we just try hard enough in The Cult of Smart, which I highly recommend to anyone serious about education reform. It's kind of crazy to think that school can have more impact on children's desire to learn and maturity than their parents anyway, since all the time up to age 5 is with parents and most of the time after that.

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Thanks for writing this! I do not know that we can call this out too much. It will harm real children's lives and set them back. They did the same thing to my son with algebra in middle school. I did not know better and believed the teachers when they said he could get back on track in high school because of a program there and it would be better for his long term math education to wait.

He never caught up in terms of advanced math. He was able to do algebra and 3/4sof geometry as a freshman in a special self-paced program. He loved math and was going to the rest of geometry and advanced algebra the following year. But then they disbanded that program and made him retake geometry the next year. He ended up hating math (was just really bored going over the same material that he already had gotten an A in) and never took anything beyond advanced algebra. Despite having an interest in program and other math adjacent activities.

My daughter, who was younger and benefited from learning not to listen to the school. I insisted she get access to appropriate math classes. She ended up taking calculus as a junior (getting an A) and graduating a year early (mostly because the high school curriculum was so bad). She did not even like math. This is in a community with relatively high performing schools.

I don't want to overstate the trope but sometimes it does feel a little bit like we want to have our own mini-cultural revolution. If I was a parent of younger child I would start paying very close attention to this. It will start with math but I suspect we will see it next in the hard sciences.

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It's hard for me to get through because the argument is so absurd on its face that I find it difficult to take seriously. Really? The idea to improve 'equity' is to...reduce resources and funding for schools? This reminds me of a George Carlin joke where he laughed at Americans for supporting education. How if you corner Americans they support more 'education' and more 'testing' for the kids, and when asked why kids are failing the tests Americans would then go 'ah don't worry about that, we'll lower the passing grades' to solve THAT problem. Resulting in a society where college kids are sent to physics classes with the only requirement being they had a pencil.

Yea, obviously we're not THAT bad, but still.

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Good piece, but seem confused and surprised by how this kind of degradation of public schooling became a "progressive" cause. Don't forget it was the most progressive places that shut down schools the longest during covid, while Texas and Florida reopened, and now there is a whole emerging literature to demonstrate the utterly obvious: the "progressive" shutdowns did by far the most damage to poorer students. The pattern is pretty clear.

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Weren't the longest school closures in the US in the Pacific states that face towards East Asia? Perhaps they admired the "Zero Covid" policies of places like China, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand, but overlooked the factors in those countries (such as almost entirely sealed borders) that made it possible?

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Well put.

A problem is that it is difficult to start teaching them in 8th grade after teaching nothing and expecting nothing for seven years. You’d need a motivated kid to absorb the new material while re-learning all that came before.

Too much of our focus is on debating “equity” at the end of a long process (Algebra, college admissions, job placement by race and gender in computer science) rather than on fixing the process itself and starting from the beginning.

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This has to be one of the most baffling ideas to come out of the US, and I'm genuinely curious what its proponents are thinking. I don't think they're acting in bad faith per se, I don't think they really are racist to the point they think Black people just can't do math, but it's hard to pin down what they underlies it all.

I guess part of it is the weird incentives of academia, where everyone's desperate to be doing _something_ about 'equity'. But since this is a very hard problem, genuinely trying to solve it carries risk, people latch onto these ideas that are unfalsifiable, or at least can't be blamed on you. If the school's not teaching algebra, you can't blame the school district for increasing inequity in algebra!

My suspicion is the combination of things that sound theoretically equitable in academia being good for your career and things that protect school boards from accountability being good for school boards is what leads to these kinds of things rather than firm underlying beliefs, but maybe some people think this actually makes sense? What's your read from actually reading their work and arguments?

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