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
There are questions that are not allowed to be asked and addressed because they are (often rightly) deemed racist. There are also questions that need to be asked that despite the racism still need to be addressed. But because there is no one size fits all, it doesn't matter. The only answers that avoid the questions are those which cannot be answered for many, many generations, and which also require racist policies to be enacted in order to be considered legitimate questions.

>>jimmyg+vw
Sorry, I don't follow.

>>dls201+Ow
Okay, I'll say what apparently everyone else is terrified of mentioning, for some reason.

Black people score lowest on IQ tests than any other population group in the world. It's been repeated the world over, dozens of times, over a minimum of 30 years, and psychometricians are dying to somehow disprove it, but have so far been unable to do so. You'll see a lot of assholes who've done absolutely zero reading on this subject post after this saying, "OMG THAT'S NOT TRUE", but if you actually go digging around in Google Scholar and sampling the research, you arrive at the same inescapable conclusion: the highest IQ individuals are Ashkenazi Jews, followed by Asians, followed by Whites, followed by Hispanics, followed by Blacks.

When people read this, they're bothered by it - and rightfully so, because it's troubling - but they don't know what to do about it. No one seems to know. No one seems to know because so far the research is pretty clear on intelligence, IQ, g factor, whatever you want to call it so you can sleep at night... but here's what we know so far:

1. You're born with it or you aren't. Some people have a high g factor, some don't.

2. There's nothing you can really do to "get smarter". Whatever you've got is what you've got. Research consistently shows you can move the needle a few points, and that's about it.

3. There's far, far more variance in population groups than between them, so while Black people collectively seem to score lowest, within that population, there's no shortage of genius-level Black people. Same for every other population group.

Don't ask me what to do about this; I don't know. That problem is beyond not only my capability, but my interest. I just know we have a problem and we need to look into it.

>>cbozem+Kc1
Yes, I've also read The Bell Curve. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with designing an education system. Lots of kids aren't going to be professional athletes, but they still manage to have fun kicking a ball around. The same is not true in mathematics, for instance.

Of course there should be a small part of the education system capable of identifying and guiding the geniuses... but it should be in the context of helping every student identify their internal motivation... which is really the only way to instill the critical thinking skills everyone seems so keen on.

>>dls201+ez1
The missing piece is media-driven culture. But video games don't cause violence, according to studies, which clearly leads to the belief that music doesn't cause drug trafficking or gang violence or hyper-machismo otherwise all other cultural music would do the same for their respective demographics. Surely media depictions of success aren't emulated. There's no way that success in sports as a way out of poverty could be hijacked not just from the top down but from the bottom up as well. There is definitely zero association between complexity of sound and complexity of thought. There is no causal link between any of this, it's simply systemic oppression over the course of decades, no, centuries. We should, in fact, celebrate this culture more.