zlacker

>>lxm+(OP)
I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not cognitively handicap the next generation.

>>throwa+2o
Most of what you're saying seems reasonable... but then I see a statistic like this:

"Black Americans receive about 7 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded each year across all disciplines, but they have received just 1 percent of those granted over the last decade in mathematics."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-math...

And this is the current production! You don't want to see the statistics regarding the number of African American faculty members in mathematics!

So what else is our current system perpetuating besides inequality? What exactly are we "weeding out" in calculus? Or college algebra?

We don't let kids trust themselves intellectually in the classroom.

>>dls201+Yv
I’d say this is a problem of compounding. The odds of any kid going on to get a PhD in math (or any subject) is vanishingly small, and is impacted by outcomes at every level of education preceding grad school. Saying that math is racist because there are few black phds in the subject neglects the law of large numbers. Few secondary teachers really understand math at a deep enough level to be inspirational… If kids from disadvantaged backgrounds are not shown how beautiful and useful math can be, what motivation would we expect there to be that could carry them far enough in the subject to get a phd in it?