This is indoctrination, not education.
@katliamom
Please take a look at the link in post #28 again. This is what will be taught, assigned as home work and tested INSTEAD of the math.
Not sure if you know but the math education as it is even in the good US public schools is behind the world standard. I first realized that when my son was in the 4th grade. My follow up research and testing showed that he was 2 years behind. The last thing the kids need is to spend time on studying nonsense during the math class.
Any reasonable person can clearly see the real objectives of this “curriculum”. Can we at the very least save the bashing of the white people for the social studies classes?
It will be the children of the poor and unsophisticated parents who will pay the price as these parents will be thinking that their kids are being taught math at their schools while they are not. Other parents will adjust - move their kids to the charter or private schools, do after-school enrichment, etc.
However, if the curriculum and methods of instruction are bad it is very difficult to correct the outcome. Kids are mostly obedient and will repeat and do what they are told. I did lose one child who is today not competent in math. She cannot analyze math problems clearly and logically. Now, 15 years later, according to her it was all my fault - I did not force her to do the Singapore Math when she refused to do it. Her grandpa chickened out too - decided that good relationships with granddaughter were more important.
“If teachers want to talk about math being appropriated by Western culture, blah, blah, blah, it should be in social studies, not math class.”
That, pretty much sums it up. Math is a science, but not a social one.
If one can’t glean the essential components of a word problem, it’s from a lack of instruction, interest, or ability. Scrubbing the whiteness out of it ain’t going to help proficiency.
And, if there are still schools discouraging girls from tutoring (and passing them out (because they’re just girls, they’ll never figure it out), deal with them on an individual basis.
And yet the percentage of women getting computer science degrees has plummeted since I got my CS degree.
Only in the most broad sense of the word. According to the UK’s Science Council, “Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.”
Since mathematics is an entirely human endeavor, and has no reality outside human minds, it cannot properly be called a “science”. It is critical to the scientific method, but so is language.
Individual basis? It’s not “a few”, and not only schools. It is ubiquitous across socity and popular culture. Take this for example - it’s a simple image search for “I’m too pretty to do math”. Look at how many version, and how many types of clothing there are.
Let’s do the Google search for “I’m too handsome to do math”. There are four versions of the same logo, and that’s all.
So for people to stand there and make unsupported claims about how this is thing of the past, and rare, is ridiculous.
Here is another little piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html
In real life, there’s my sister, when buying a car, and trying share an error in her favor on the contract with the salesman, being told, “don’t you worry your pretty little head about that”.
Two notes: said sister is a CPA, and, no, she did not purchase a car at this dealership.
While this was many years ago, I would be very surprised if it isn’t still occurring.
@tanbiko I read the link in #28. There is nothing there to indicate students will be learning the described curriculum INSTEAD of math.
I get it that you think American math education is sub-par. Go ahead and do something about it, tutor your child or enroll her/him in some STEM-specific private. Ignore the fact that American-born scientists and mathematicians are among the world’s best despite what you perceive as inferior K-12 education. (And true, there are many foreign-born engineers in this country – but that’s because American-born kids who are good in math prefer other, frankly more lucrative fields, such as finance for example.)
But don’t make up stuff. It won’t do in any math class, the proposed ones in Seattle or traditional ones.
I had a car dealer tell me to come back when I was really ready to buy with my husband. Not that long ago. Also didn’t buy from that dealer and told anyone who would listen to avoid them.
---- Only in the most broad sense of the word. According to the UK’s Science Council, …
Have to agree: that, and the remainder, pretty much settles the issue.
And as sad as I am for every woman who was told ‘not to worry your pretty little head about that’, I’m more sorrowful for each time a necessarily different approach at being swindled worked on me.
Different strokes for different folks. Seattle wouldn’t be considering what they’re considering doing, if enough didn’t buy into the idea applying today’s sociology will correct what has so far been an abysmal experiment in improving math skills.
https://nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/report/sections/science-and-engineering-labor-force/women-and-minorities-in-the-s-e-workforce (figure 3-27) indicates that the biggest gains for women in STEM fields have been in biology. The more math-heavy STEM fields have not had as much gains for women (or have had drops in some cases).
https://nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/report/sections/higher-education-in-science-and-engineering/undergraduate-education-enrollment-and-degrees-in-the-united-states (figure 2-11) gives female percentage of bachelor’s degrees in various STEM fields over the years. The recession of the early 2000s (dotcom crash) appears to have suppressed female interest in CS as a college major since then.
Biology is becoming very math-heavy. Just sayin’.
But have college biology departments generally increased math (and/or statistics) requirements for biology majors to reflect the increased use of math (and/or statistics) in biology?
Bio majors have to sink or swim whe it comes to math when they hit the workforce. Genomics, no? Every bio major I personally know (and I know quite a few!) is a stats pro.
The problem with math in the USA, aside from all the inequity issues, which are rife in all subjects, not only math, is that it is being taught as template matching. Kids learn how to plug different numbers into the same template, and then do 100 examples for homework. They do not learn basic concepts, they do not learn math as problem solving, they do not gain any basic understands of the processes.
Instead of anybody solving that, they argue about whether doing 100 examples is enough, that perhaps 200 examples will help the kids on the SATs. Kids in the USA already do far more homework than kids from any of the countries which surpass the USA in math.
That is because math is easy, natural sciences are difficult. As we delve deeper and deeper into biology, more systems need a simplified model, since we can no longer understand these systems as they are.
When ecology was observing the animals that a wolf eats and making lists, we didn’t need math. But if you are trying to follow three packs of wolves in Yellowstone, the elk, the hares, etc, you are no longer able to discern the actual relationships without creating a more simplified mathematical models.
When studying the cell just meant describing the different organelles, you didn’t need math. But when you’re studying at protein folding, genomics, transcription, etc, you need simplified mathematical models.
Atomic and sub-atomic physics are all math, because we cannot see them, and really cannot truly envision them. To understand what’s going on, we, again, need to use simplified mathematical models.
Even the most complex mathematical models, that require computers to tease out meanings, are, as the name suggests, just models - simplified representation of what we think is happening.
Not arguing with anyone here but there are more women in STEM related fields (including CS and Math) than there were a generation ago. Although the study refers to percentages (which can be very misleading - 2 = 100% gain from 1), I’m more interested in actual numbers (volume). Even so, a quote from the study reflecting 1993 -2013:
"During the same period, the number of women in computer and mathematical sciences occupations also nearly tripled (an increase of 173%). However, this new, rapidly growing and changing field attracted relatively more men than women (male participation grew 239%). The result has been an overall decline in the proportion of women, from 31% to 26%. These trends make the gender disparity among computer and mathematical scientists second only to the gender disparity among engineers. However, the declining proportion of women in computer and mathematical sciences occupations does not extend to doctorate-level workers: Among those with a doctorate, the proportion of women increased, from 16% in 1993 to 26% in 2015.
During the past two decades, the proportion of women also increased among workers in engineering (from 9% to 15%) and in physical sciences (from 21% to 28%). In these two occupational categories, this increase was led by an expansion of women’s numbers in the workforce (by 108% in engineering and 53% in physical sciences), while men’s numbers barely changed between 1993 and 2015."
The proportion may be a net decline but the number of participants is a big increase. There are lots more tech based / math based jobs that need to be filled today and women have a far more present seat at the table - as they should.
^ an aside - wish I new how to highlight or use links on cc. Sorry for the lengthy post.
We don’t need new methods to teach math. We need qualified teachers who can deliver what has already been well thought out methods. Other countries adopt the methods researched in the US with huge success. We need to retrain and math teachers and pay all teachers better, from the elementary school as well as HS.
We don’t just need better teachers, we need a cultural shift. I tutor HS kids in math occasionally, and it’s clear that doing well in math is neither kids’ nor parents’ top priority. They may start to worry after a C in algebra, but with everything else that’s going on, the kids don’t really have time for extra work on math, and fall further and further behind. The things that are more important to fill their time with are mostly sports, also music and other extracurriculars. Nothing wrong with doing sports, of course, but when it’s to the detriment of academics, you start to wonder about cultural values.
I think there needs to be a COHESIVE curriculum. In our district, 7th and 8th grade teachers taught math so differently. For example, kids in 7th grade could use calculators as much as they wanted and 8th grade kids couldn’t use them at all. ?!? And teachers need to make sure kids can do long division, even if they have to resort to old-fashioned methods. I’ve tutored more than one kid who just couldn’t “get” the new way of doing long division and understood the antiquated method with no problem. My son’s 9th grade teacher in advanced math got mad at the KIDS when they didn’t know how to do long division. She had to pause her regular curriculum to get them up to speed in basic operations. 
I heard a lot of frustration expressed among kids about math, and it shouldn’t be that way.
Perhaps true, but what is the direct causation to K12 education, the point of this thread?
hint: 42% of those who take the AP Comp Sci test in NYC are girls. 28% nationally are girls, but that is a large increase over the prior few years (more than 2x in total numbers since '16 alone).
Seems that educators are getting the idea that girls can thrive in all STEM.