You are some Humanities major, according to your posts. How happens that you don’t know the slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”?
I am very proud. Today, my oldest D, told me that math is a beautiful subject. It had logic, reasoning, and gives you precise answers. Contrary to Social Sciences, that are always subjective and your grade always depends on the political views of your teacher.
It takes years to understand the power and fairness of math. I am a proud parent 
The quote comes from a French historian, and it was popularized by Marx. [url=<a href=“https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs%5DHere%5B/url”>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs]Here[/url] is the wiki entry for it.
For the discussion at hand, it’s sort of completely out of context and will probably lead to people talking about communism instead of the actual issue at hand. And that’s probably not the right kind of politics for this discussion.
@californiaaa: I was being heavily snarky, taking it at face value rather than taking the bait that was claiming (wrongly, BTW) that the things listed were hallmarks of communism (not socialism—after all, that line wasn’t Lenin, it was popularized by Marx).
Apparently I was too deadpan, since so many people didn’t get what I was doing.
<in alaska,="" i="" found="" a="" gap="" of="" 6.3="" years,="" by="" 6th="" grade=""> Some children learn 2+1=3 and some children learn precalculus?
And ironically, the idea that everyone should be able to go to college, graduate, and land a “college-level job” isn’t practiced or believed in most countries outside the US…including self-proclaimed communist regimes like the Soviet Union and Mainland China*.
In fact, with one notable exception discussed below, most of those self-proclaimed communist regimes were just as aggressive about tracking students by academic ability** from middle school or sometimes even earlier and with minute exceptions…reserve university places for the academically elite students. Comparatively speaking, the US “everyone should go to college” mentality and the lack of academic tracking makes us the ones who come closest to that “socialistic” quote.
In short, this “everyone should go to college” is essentially an American ideal.
- Only exception in Mainland China was during the Cultural Revolution when educational institutions/research institutes were effectively shut down for a decade. Once that decade-long period ended, the faction which succeeded the Maoist Gang of 4 reinstituted educational tracking and college-entrance exams with a vengeance. This factor is also a reason why "holistic admissions" as practiced in many US respectable/elite colleges is regarded with suspicion as "being too political/based on connections/influence" by those who lived through that period.
** Have a younger Russian friend who attended a academically selective STEM-centered vocational high school which was geared towards preparing students aspiring to attend military officer training schools. Wasn’t considered qualified to be placed on the academic track to apply/attend university under the Soviet educational system. However, once he came to the US, he excelled as an engineering/CS double major on scholarship at a top 50 U known for its engineering/CS programs.
@cobrat , none of the countries you mentioned claimed that they built a Communist society. Communism was just their stated ultimate goal.
It seems the US is trying to reach Communism first.
<including self-proclaimed="" communist="" regimes="" like="" the="" soviet="" union="" and="" mainland="" china*.="">
Soviet Union and China are socialist, not communist. “From each according to his ability, To each according to his contribution” is a principle of distribution considered to be one of the defining features of socialism.
Soviet Union and China had MERIT-based college admission, not holistic. In the Soviet Union and China, children learned math, a lot!
According to contribution … according to contribution … according to contribution …
** Have a younger Russian friend who attended a academically selective STEM-centered vocational high school which was geared towards preparing students aspiring to attend military officer training schools. Wasn’t considered qualified to be placed on the academic track to apply/attend university under the Soviet educational system. However, once he came to the US, he excelled as an engineering/CS double major on scholarship at a top 50 U known for its engineering/CS programs.
What is your point? That a student, too weak for Russian math program excels in USA? Does it surprise you? Russian students are very good in math. Math department of the Moscow State University produces finest mathematicians. Russian mathematicians are often offered tenured positions in the top American colleges.
How does it prove the point that, “Algebra 1 is NOT needed for American kids”?
On YouTube one guy asks his girlfriend if she wants her pizza cut into 12 slices or 8. She says she cannot eat 12 so she wants 8.
Her math is fine but no value.
Thanks, love it!
Re californiaaa’s post #264, the New York Times data involve some aggregation of both reading and math scores on standardized tests. If you are interested in pursuing the methodology of comparison, there are links in the New York Times article. Presumably the spread is somewhat smaller in math at 6th grade level (that is, the spread of the averages–since the individual spread could be very broad), and somewhat larger in reading, than the aggregated spread.
The point is this:
And it’s not a recent one, but one which has been contested to some extent from nearly the very beginning of US history.
One good illustration of this was how there was much grumbling and concerns about raising academic admissions standards at West Point in the early to mid 19th century because it was considered “too elitist”* by many…especially politicians and upper/upper-middle class citizens in Southern and Western states where K-12 educational access even for the upper/upper-middle class was really hit or miss.
It got to the point that for ~ a decade before the beginning of the Civil War, West Point** had a 5 year curriculum partially to include an extra year to remediate any academic deficiencies from admits…especially those from Southern and Western states. They found the 5 year plan didn’t worked as well as hoped so they went back to the 4 year plan right before the Civil War started.
- There were some 19th century politicians and citizens who felt that because the public taxes are paying for West Point that admission should be open to all who are interested in attending similar to the US ideal that "everyone should go to college and graduate with a diploma".
** Related to the value of math, West Point was also the first engineering/STEM oriented college operated as such in the US in an era when many colleges/universities of the era focused on the Western Classics/Religious education and associated languages(Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, etc). If one aspired to be an engineer up until the mid-19th century, there weren’t many options other than West Point.
Okay, y’all, this thread is about math, not communism, or the economic system of the United States (or any other country, FTM).
(And I apologize for my contribution to the threadjack.)
I hope you realize that the idea to get rid of Algebra requirements in schools and colleges is political, right?
Maybe Tramp will just prohibit Al-Gebra and the problem will be solved.
Just in case people want to know (slightly off topic, but it pertains to the main topic of math education systems), here is the way the tracking system worked in the USSR:
- Everyone goes to school through middle school (equivalent of about 10th grade in the US).
- The lowest grade of students finish middle school, then head off to a trade school to learn a working trade (e.g. plumbing, electrician, etc.). The middle-grade and upper-grade go to high school (goes up to the equivalent of the first year of college). The lowest grade of students can go to high school night classes later on if they’d like to get on the college track later in life - in practice it almost never happens.
- The middle grade of students finish high school, then go on to vocational school (about the equivalent of a bachelors degree) then are placed in a job. They can go to university after they’re done, if they can get admitted. Many do. Your friend probably fell into this track, so his performance in the US vs. Russia would make sense.
- The top grade of students go to university (the equivalent of a Masters or professional degree). Universities, like trade and vocational schools, have the ability to place students into jobs.
- The most successful university students can be recommended by a faculty member to the equivalent of a PhD program, for the academic track to professorship.
The post-Soviet universities took a lot of influence from the Western Bachelors/Masters/PhD tracks. Both systems more or less work and each has its own strengths and weaknesses over the other. Personally I find the grade school education model of the USSR (standardized across all schools, more rigorous, early tracking) to be a much more interesting point of discussion. There’s a lot of good to be gained from the discussion of the ideas themselves, when it doesn’t derail into a “socialism vs capitalism” argument of sorts.
Well… they’re not wrong.
I think US education suffers from trying to reach the ideal of leaving all paths open to everyone through age 18. This causes most K-12 education to be pitched to a pretty low standard. I like the idea of having a more rigorous K-8 education and offering a hs track to students who don’t do well academically or who aren’t so inclined that would give them a good trade certification with good employability after hs. And there should also be options for re-entry into the academic path for students who change their minds or improve their academics later on.
Despite our current ideal, we still see threads on this site about students getting tracked and/or shut out of more advanced coursework they feel capable of. This is particularly evident in middle school math tracking but I’ve also seen complaints about kids not being allowed to enroll in honors or AP classes in high school due to institutional rules or tracking in other subjects (eg, if they were on the “academic” track they aren’t allowed to move up). So our current system isn’t as open as I think the ideal or the educational establishment would like to think.
If we track students, I’d say we need to still let them take advanced classes in subject areas where they are capable. There was no AP in my high school when I attended, but despite my problems with algebra I would have had no problem with AP history or English. Other students might be capable of taking more advanced math classes but have problems with writing-intensive classes. What if a student can handle any math class that’s thrown at him/her, but have a problem seeing two sides of an issue (mostly just able to think in a linear fashion). I have the opposite problem; I have trouble when there’s one correct answer. We need to make sure these students have the opportunity to use the talents they do have. I would have no problem being kept from getting a Master’s providing I could have the same career.
When I went to high school, students could choose different tracks or levels by subject. E.g. advanced/honors math + regular English, or honors English + regular math. In theory, any high school can do this.
What would be the reason for a high school to force students to do “all or nothing” in terms of choosing advanced/honors versus regular courses across all subjects?
Convenience?
That’s the way it was in my high school, too—there was a “college prep” track, a “general” track, and a “vocational” track. You only got to take shop if you were in the vocational track, and you only got to take AP courses if you were in the college prep track (and so on).