by Lee Ohanian
California’s latest K–12 test scores were released earlier this month. Despite spending 26 percent more per pupil after inflation since 2011, test scores remain low, and improvement is proceeding at a glacial pace. Just 40 percent of California schoolchildren are proficient at math. What should be done? Seattle’s idea is to teach their students that US math education is racist, is used to oppress people of color and the disadvantaged, and has been used to exploit natural resources.
According to Seattle educators, math instruction in the United States is an example of “Western Math,” which apparently is the appropriation of mathematical knowledge by Western cultures. While everyone agrees that two plus two is four, three times three is nine, and that there are three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle, Western Math critics worry about more nuanced issues, such as why we teach kids Western counting and not, for example, how the Aborigines count.
Apparently, ancient cultures also used different terminology to refer to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may have focused on geometric shapes different from triangles and circles. They may have called the degrees in a circle something other than degrees. And now it seems that math education—in all of its abstraction—should become culturally and socially focused away from those Westerners who coopted it.
Seattle’s new proposed math curriculum will take US public school math instruction where no one has gone before.
Students will be taught how “Western Math” is used as a tool of power and oppression, and that it disenfranchises people and communities of color. They will be taught that “Western Math” limits economic opportunities for people of color. They will be taught that mathematics knowledge has been withheld from people of color.
If you are struggling to understand the logic of this, you are not alone. For the life of me, I don’t know how the Pythagorean theorem, for example, or Euclidean geometry, more broadly, oppress people or communities of color, or how these foundations of mathematics have been appropriated by Western culture.
In fact, I really doubt that anyone whose foremost interest is in culture—Western or otherwise—thinks much about Pythagoras or his famous theorem and whether the relationship between the sides of a triangle denigrates people of color or has been used to promote WASPs and the wealthy.
Seattle’s proposal implicitly claims that it will be more successful in teaching math. Perhaps, but I am unaware of any compelling evidence supporting this view. And I see no reason why telling kids that they have been oppressed by “Western Math” would lead to better learning outcomes.
For example, would anyone understand geometry any better if they knew that Pythagoras may have been a vegetarian, or that he may have practiced mysticism? (I am assuming that these two practices are outside mainstream Western culture, but then again, maybe the West has appropriated veganism and mysticism? This is really making my head spin.)
Would kids learn how to tabulate numbers more effectively if teachers spent weeks describing the history and use of the Chinese abacus?
Seattle’s idea about racist math education will be right up California’s alley. Last August, California educators released a draft of a statewide ethnic studies curriculum for public comment.
The California curricular proposal also focuses on racism and is heavy on ideology, with pot shots taken at most anything and everything “Western.” Take for example capitalism. In one of the most uninformed economic criticisms I have ever seen, the proposal states that capitalism is a tool for power and oppression (sound familiar?), which fits right in with Seattle educators.
Just how bad is California’s student math performance? You can judge for yourself, based on the following question that was asked to 11th graders: Add the square root of 16 and the third root of 8.
The square root of 16 is 4 (4 x 4) and the third root of 8 is 2 (2 x 2 x 2). Four plus two is six. Doable for a 17-year old who has been taking mathematics, yes?
No. Only about 37 percent of students answered the question correctly. This percentage is not much above 25 percent, which would have been the number of correct answers if students had simply randomly guessed from the four possible answers provided. We had better either improve math education pronto or start to recruit better-trained students to the state.
There is a better way to help California’s kids succeed at math than to go down the road of racism and identity politics. Simply reintroduce the principles of math education used in the state before the development of Common Core curriculum.
Before Common Core, California had its own mathematics curriculum written primarily by Stanford University Mathematics Department faculty.
An independent review of California’s pre–Common Core math curriculum gave it a grade of “A” and noted, “If any state has math standards right, it’s California. The Golden State’s standards avoid almost all the pitfalls of other states. . . . All in all, the state has a top-notch blueprint for mathematical excellence.”
But as education experts have noted, the Common Core math curriculum was never developed to be on par with best-practice international standards, nor did Common Core provide adequate coverage of K–12 math topics.
It is not racism nor the appropriation of mathematical knowledge by Westerners that is the reason for deficient math learning by our children. It is something much simpler. It is a poorly designed math curriculum that the state mistakenly adopted. It is easy to improve.
Improving outcomes is easy in principle. Change the curriculum and add teachers who know how to teach math. But sadly, at least in California, this will be almost impossible to implement in practice.
TimesRNowBetter • 3 months ago
The problem the left has with Math (and Engineering and true science) is that there is ONE right answer and you cannot be subjective with Math - you can't change it to be what you want it to be - much like the left believes with sex (but not age, curiously). So, the left has to attack it as racist or whatever -ist you want to call it, in order to discredit it because of it's objectivity.
jacky TimesRNowBetter • 2 months ago
I agree. Liberal Arts is where the erosion was initially.
Jim jacky • a month ago
I think it has more to do with adoption of poor methodologies in many fields.
Douglas McFarland TimesRNowBetter • 16 days ago • edited
It is the disease of post modernism run amok. The academic movement that destroyed the rigor and objectivity of
the humanities and made it utter horse doody. It should be long dead yet the stink of post modernism lingers in academics rotting it to the core. Even Karl Popper would shoot milk out his nose in shocked disbelief at this farce. I am a lefty by the way. There are idiots on both sides of the aisle. Most liberals and conservatives I know suck at math and logic. Most of the PhD mathematicians I studied under leaned left.
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Jesse Williams TimesRNowBetter • 3 months ago
Ever hear of the Simpson Paradox?
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Slugger_McBuster Jesse Williams • 3 months ago • edited
Has nothing to do with the OP's point. Simpson's Paradox is an observed "cancellation" effect in the "soft sciences" subset of mathematics -- i.e., S&P -- and furthermore, it's a phenomenon typically seen only in selective applications of statistical/probabilistic analysis or pseudo-analysis. What this has to do with OP's point is beyond me. A form of cancellation or an observed paradox in the sciences -- whether it's a statistical trend, relative speed of two photons aimed at one another, or acoustical/vibration cancellation -- doesn't mean Laplace transforms are racist or open for argument.
Since we're on the subject of statistics and charting trends, though -- when the self-appointed "social engineers" and "pollsters" get their hands on anything, they turn it into a steaming pile of excrement.
As we all know, you can "creatively" couch and massage statistics in such a way as to cut both ways for propaganda purposes.
But hard math and raw quantitative statistical data are not open for discussion -- the results and solutions are what they are, without nuance or equivocation.
The OP's original point is valid.
Furthermore, the indoctrination facilities set up by leftists under the guise of "the education system" have caused many easily misled and/or victim-minded people to rely on utterly false premises and basically shut down their critical-thinking capacity entirely.
The leftist ideological paradigm is rife with not only "subjective" premises passed off as "there can be no debate in this 'consensus' " -- but they and their disseminators in the media flat-out make sh/t up, including fake "polls" that try to steer public opinion rather than gauging existing opinion. Even their brand of S&P fukcing fails.
In any case, they've sunk so low as to say gender is not determined by genitalia, math is racist, and obesity in black women is Trump's fault.
It's utter, bizarre lunacy mingled with the most crass, pandering, and damnable mendacity.
But thanks for your elliptical -- if admirably "short-winded" -- brand of pedantry, Jesse.
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Jesse Williams Slugger_McBuster • 3 months ago
"The problem the left has with Math (and Engineering and true science) is that there is ONE right answer and you cannot be subjective with Math " Simpson Paradox proves otherwise. 2 different conclusions from the same set of data.
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TimesRNowBetter Jesse Williams • 3 months ago
Nope. Why don't you explain it to us and how it relates to my point and the article.
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Jesse Williams TimesRNowBetter • 3 months ago
Math doesn't always show a black and white answer. A set of statistical data can give two different and opposite conclusions. One of the best-known examples of Simpson's paradox is a study of gender bias among graduate school admissions to University of California, Berkeley. The admission figures for the fall of 1973 showed that men applying were more likely than women to be admitted, and the difference was so large that it was unlikely to be due to chance. Men Women
Applicants Admitted Applicants Admitted
Total 8442 44% 4321 35%
But when examining the individual departments, it appeared that six out of 85 departments were significantly biased against men, whereas only four were significantly biased against women. In fact, the pooled and corrected data showed a "small but statistically significant bias in favor of women"
As for the rest of the article itself, Seattle is full of it and I agree with you.
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Tom Painter Jesse Williams • 3 months ago
You are talking about statistics, which uses math as a tool, and yes statistics can take readings of data and make interpretive analysis of the data. That is not hard and direct and simple math, as much as various math tools are applied in doing it. Math is math. 1 + 1 = 2, not 3. If you don't have basic math with its black and white rules, you know not the tools to use to go messing with statistics. The subject of getting a sold grounding in MATH is not about statistics, as much as statistics use math tools.
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TimesRNowBetter Jesse Williams • 3 months ago
Thanks for explaining. I'm not quite sure what you're getting at - sounds like a statistical problem rather than a math problem.
But yes, Seattle (and those Democrats running it) are full of it.
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Norman Wilson TimesRNowBetter • 3 months ago
There are three types of lies.
1) Lies
2) Damned lies
3) Statistics
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Peter Olofsson Jesse Williams • 2 months ago
But the resolution of the "paradox" is that women tended to apply in higher numbers to grad shools that admitted fewer students. It was indeed overall easier for men to be admitted, but not because of discrimintation; rather, men made it easier for themselves to be admitted by choice of school. There is nothing "non-Western" about the description or explanation of Simpson's paradox. Each calculation involved has only ONE correct solution. The question "Was there discrimination?" is not a mathematical question.
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Douglas McFarland Jesse Williams • 16 days ago
Statistics isn't math. It is a science with a strong component of probability.
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TimesRNowBetter • 3 months ago
If Seattle thinks that Western Math is racist and children should be taught something other than Western Math, like Aborigine Math, then I contend that Western money is also racist and the employees at Seattle District schools should similarly be paid in Aborigine money or goods that they can barter with.
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BigBagofNothing TimesRNowBetter • 3 months ago
They should start teaching Eastern (Asian) math. See how that works out for those that can't handle the watered down version so-called Western math.
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Preda BigBagofNothing • 2 months ago
BigBag -- Asian Math has no problems of this kind, they had there own development, and they are vey active in catching up with what they do not have.
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Robbie Smith TimesRNowBetter • 3 months ago • edited
It's not just math; Blacks perform very poorly in all academic subjects.
The persistent so-called "achievement gap" reveals the same racial IQ hierarchy on standardized academic exams. The SAT is largely a measure of general intelligence. Scores on the SAT correlate very highly with scores on standardized tests of intelligence, and like IQ scores, are stable across time and not easily increased through training, coaching, or practice. SAT preparation courses appear to work, but the gains are small — on average, no more than about 20 points per section.
Vanderbilt University researchers tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search and determined that scores on the SAT correlate so highly with IQ that they are described as a "thinly disguised" intelligence test.
ACT Scores by Race:
Year White Black Asian
2009 22.2 16.9 23.2
2010 22.3 16.9 23.4
2011 22.4 17.0 23.6
2012 22.4 17.0 23.6
2013 22.2 16.9 23.5
2014 22.3 17.0 23.5
2015 22.4 17.1 23.9
2016 22.2 17.0 24.0
2017 22.4 17.1 24.3
2018 22.2 16.9 24.5
Source: ACT, Inc.
~~~~~~~
Black-White SAT Score Gap by Year:
Year White Black Gap
1985 1038 839 199
1990 1031 849 185
1996 1052 857 195
2000 1060 859 201
2005 1061 863 197
2010 1063 855 208
2015 1047 846 201
The new SAT introduced in 2017 was "designed to inspire and increase access to college" by creating "a more equitable exam". The new SAT cannot be compared to previous results:
Year White Black Gap
2017 1118 941 177
2018 1123 946 177
The 2017 "college readiness" scores (ability to earn a C or higher in an entry-level course) showed the stark racial achievement gap; Asians scored 70% college readiness, Whites 59%, and Blacks only 20%.
(Source: U.S. Dept. of Education, College Board)
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfac...
SAT scores are highly correlated to intelligence test scores. The SAT correlates with an IQ test at 0.86, almost the same as an IQ test correlates with itself. For this reason, we can very reliably take SAT scores and convert them to IQ scores.
In the 20 year period from 1994-2014 the Black-White difference increased on both the verbal and math SATs despite targeted efforts to close the race gap. On the reading test, it rose from .91 to .96 standard deviations. On the math test, it rose from .95 to 1.03 standard deviations.
In fact, the truncated nature of the SAT math score distribution suggests that these race gaps would be even larger given a harder exam with a bigger score variance. Note, for example, how the Black score distribution is cut off at the bottom while the Asian score distribution is cut off at the top. That suggests that a redesigned exam might feature even more pronounced race gaps.
Percent by Race Reaching the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark:
15% = Black
24% = Non-White Hispanic
35% = Native American
53% = White
56% = Asian
Source: The College Board, 2014
PISA scores by race:
White Black Asian
531 433 525
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, 2015
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blacks and Whites with Equal Educational Attainment Differ in Cognitive Ability
Black and White Americans with the same formal level of education differ significantly in their cognitive abilities. Specifically, within any given level of formal education Whites consistently outperform Blacks. Moreover, this effect is so strong that Blacks often underperform Whites who have lower levels of formal education than they do.
Consider the following data from the General Social Survey. This public data is frequently used in social science research and contains a test of verbal intelligence as well as measurements of participant’s self-identified race and highest educational degree obtained. Verbal intelligence tests correlate at around .75 with full-scale IQ and so this data can also be taken as a fair measure of intelligence in general (Lynn, 1998). If we set the White mean score on this test to 100 and the standard deviation to 15, we can come up with an "IQ" style scale.
As can be seen, using this method Blacks with a graduate degree have a level of verbal intelligence indistinguishable from that of Whites with a junior college degree. Blacks with a four-year degree are roughly on par with Whites who never went to college at all.
IQ BY RACE AND HIGHEST DEGREE EARNED (1972 - 2014):
Highest Degree White IQ Black IQ Gap
High School Drop-out: 89 82 7
High School Diploma 98 90 8
Junior College Degree 102 95 7
Bachelor's Degree 108 100 8
Graduate Degree 113 102 11
This data is consistent with evidence from the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) which administered tests of cognitive ability to 26,000 US adults in 1992. These tests were designed to measure how well people could take information and use it in a way which would help them function in modern society.
Blacks are such poor academic achievers that the National Achievement Scholarship Program was created with lower standards for Black candidates only, instead of the National Merit Scholarship Program which is open to everyone else.
THE SMARTEST STUDENTS: The National Merit Scholarship Program was founded to identify and honor scholastically talented American youth and to encourage them to develop their abilities to the fullest.
BLACK STUDENTS ONLY: The National Achievement Scholarship Program was initiated specifically to identify academically promising Black American youth and encourage their pursuit of higher education.
They are both measured on the PSAT.
Minimum score for National Achievement: 190
Minimum score for National Merit: 220
Roughly, PSAT x 10 = SAT (out of 2400)
Bill Gates, after pulling philanthropic funding from Common Core, "When disaggregated by race, we see two Americas. One where White students perform along the lines of the best in the world with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America, where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece."
Blacks score so poorly on academic exams that colleges give them 230 "race bonus" SAT points to help them qualify for admission:
http://www.latimes.com/loca...
https://www.princeton.edu/~...
"Personal scores" are the new subterfuge for artificially assisting Blacks gain admission to universities. Asian-American applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time only in the top academic index decile. By contrast, white applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time in the top six deciles. Hispanics receive such personal scores more than 20% of the time in the top seven deciles, and Blacks receive such scores more than 20% of the time in the top eight deciles.
An otherwise identical applicant bearing an Asian male identity with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 32 percent chance of admission if he were White, a 77 percent chance of admission if he were Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance of admission if he were Black.
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TimesRNowBetter Robbie Smith • 2 months ago
Those Asians ruin the leftist narrative, that the tests and education methods are skewed towards whites, at the detriment of blacks and Hispanics.
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LUCIDANDBLACK Robbie Smith • 2 months ago
Hi Rob, To set the table, I am a mathematics major, tutoring mathematics and physics at the community college level, tutoring everything to 1st semester differential equations. I tutor twenty-hours a week, spending 2-days a week tutoring athletes and 2-days with STEM students. One last think, I worked as a system software developer for over thirty-years and I am African American. With that stated, here is my considered assessment.
Although I have read Charles Murphy’s "The Bell Curve," listen to some Jordan Peterson videos on intelligence, I do not believe a lack of IQ is the problem, a lack of planning and preparedness is. My proof of this is my African immigrant tutees are some of the most intelligent, engaged and confident that I have ever worked with. I also work with Korean, Vietnamese and other Asian students as well, so I have a variety of demographics for comparisons, including numerous women. There are two problems that I see: (1) the African American culture is defective, glorifying round-ball and entertainment; and (2) babies having babies, parents incapable of passing down wisdom or showing their children the academic ropes, not having experienced it themselves. It is the blind leading the blind. African immigrants tutees--not to be confused with African Americans tutees--likely come, on average, from a higher social classes, those having the wherewithal and drive to immigrate to the United States, so this must be taken into account. These are serious students and they mean business. But culture is not the only thing.
Although I do not have direct knowledge, I am very concerned with the K-12 curriculum. How is it that young people can graduate from high-school and not know the basics, the real number postulates: multiplicative identity, multiplicative inverse, etc.? All too often I find tutees attempting to use their calculators for 10-by-10 times-table problems, I having to admonish them and insist that they be turned off. If K-12 were doing their jobs, I would not be doing all of this remedial tutoring. Young African Americans are also being taught thinks that are downright counterproductive. I had one young man, Devon, educate me that slaves were breed to be dumb, something he learned in his African Studies class. And he internalized this crap; I kid you not. Then there is Calculus II.
Although Calculus II appears to be the brick-wall erected to keep the masses out of STEM careers, the problems failing students encountered occur long before. Most can make it through Calculus I but I consider anything lower than a B-grade a failure because a C-grade will not carry one through Calc II; I know this from personal experience, having failed the course twice in a row some three decades prior. Aside from the postulates, if exponents, logarithms, trigonometric functions are not memory items, one will most likely fail this course because doing integration, unlike differentiation one learns in Calculus I, requires tremendous pattern recognition, so if the first move towards an integration requires one to recognize a trigonometric pattern that can be simplified into something that can be integrated and one does not see it, that is one test question missed. And for test having as few as 8 to 12 questions, it does not take many missed questions to flunk a test. As described in "Chunking and Chess Skills," Chapter X, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (GEB) by Douglas R. Hofstadter, chess masters achieve success through pattern recognition, not the ability to see seven, eight, or nine, moves ahead. And stepping back and visualizing the big picture is more valuable than procedures and formulas. I see too many tutees doing procedures and formulas completely out of context, having no reason to justify what they are doing. In the same way, one can know how every chess piece moves, one can know how to castle, but context is more important. What is the goal? Taking the effort to derive the trigonometric, exponent, and logarithmic functions using the limit definition for the derivative is well-worth the effort. It is surprising how many Pre-Calc students cannot derive the quadratic formula from the general form of the quadratic equation. Finally, taking Calc II, a course which will be graded, with the expectation of learning something is one’s first mistake. One should take that type of course only to prove that one already knows the material. The Great Courses and MathTutorDVD publish coherent lectures on mathematics, taking one step-by-step. And, unlike a professor, the lectures can be repeated over and over again. Most importantly, the courses are lectured by folks who know what they are doing, one being the co-author of a popular Calculus II college textbook. Accordingly, notes must be taken, a lot of learning occurs via the hand. For many, a semester is not enough time to absorbed all the new concepts and back-fill weak algebra and trig skills as well.
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Robbie Smith LUCIDANDBLACK • 2 months ago
"African immigrants tutees--not to be confused with African Americans tutees--likely come, on average, from a higher social classes, those having the wherewithal and drive to immigrate to the United States, so this must be taken into account."
Half of African immigrants are White.
"It appears then that the very high educational attainment of African-born U.S. residents is profoundly influenced by two facts. First, nearly one half of all African-born U.S. residents are rather wealthy white former residents of white-controlled African colonies. Second, for black Africans who reside here, many come to this country for the express purpose of gaining a college degree. Those who stay on will necessarily be college educated. In short, the African-born blacks who are in this country are a highly elite group. Possibly the most valuable information the Census Bureau could now develop would be a refinement of these figures breaking down the statistics to show the race of African residents in the United States."
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Robbie Smith LUCIDANDBLACK • 2 months ago
Large-scale meta-analyses by researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that SAT performance is as good of a predictor of overall college grade point average as it is of freshman grade point average, and Vanderbilt researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow have documented that the SAT predicts life outcomes well beyond the college years, including income and occupational achievements.
Furthermore, the SAT is largely a measure of general intelligence. Scores on the SAT correlate very highly with scores on standardized tests of intelligence, and like IQ scores, are stable across time and not easily increased through training, coaching, or practice. SAT preparation courses appear to work, but the gains are small — on average, no more than about 20 points per section.
Vanderbilt University researchers tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13. Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that they are described as a "thinly disguised" intelligence test. The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were "only" in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage.
The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test
"The racial scoring gap on the SAT test has now become wider than has been the case for the past two decades. Many believe that in the years to come the gap may grow smaller, not because blacks are catching up to whites in educational achievement, but rather because the test makers are adding a writing component to the test that may be manipulated to lessen racial differences and therefore reduce public criticisms of the test.
If we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the calculations and compare only Blacks and Whites, we find that 0.2 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above on the verbal SAT compared to 2.2 percent of all White test takers. Thus, Whites were 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Overall, there were 49 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored at or above the 750 level.
On the math SAT, only 0.16 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above compared to 1.8 percent of White test takers. Thus, Whites were more than 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the math SAT. Overall, there were more than 61 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored 750 or above on the math section of the SAT.
In a race-neutral competition for the approximately 50,000 places for first-year students at the nation's 25 top-ranked universities, high-scoring Blacks would be buried by a huge mountain of high-scoring non-Black students. Today, under prevailing affirmative action admissions policies, there are about 3,000 Black first-year students matriculating at these 25 high-ranking universities, about 6 percent of all first-year students at these institutions. But if these schools operated under a strict race-neutral admissions policy where SAT scores were the most important qualifying yardstick, these universities could fill their freshman classes almost exclusively with students who score at the very top of the SAT scoring scale. As shown previously, Black students make up at best between 1 and 2 percent of these high-scoring groups."
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Robbie Smith LUCIDANDBLACK • 2 months ago • edited
"I do not believe a lack of IQ is the problem, a lack of planning and preparedness is. My proof of this is my African immigrant tutees are some of the most intelligent, engaged and confident that I have ever worked with."
Here are the facts-
Blacks and Whites with Equal Educational Attainment Differ in Cognitive Ability
Black and White Americans with the same formal level of education differ significantly in their cognitive abilities. Specifically, within any given level of formal education Whites consistently outperform Blacks. Moreover, this effect is so strong that Blacks often underperform Whites who have lower levels of formal education than they do.
Consider the following data from the General Social Survey. This public data is frequently used in social science research and contains a test of verbal intelligence as well as measurements of participant’s self-identified race and highest educational degree obtained. Verbal intelligence tests correlate at around .75 with full-scale IQ and so this data can also be taken as a fair measure of intelligence in general (Lynn, 1998). If we set the White mean score on this test to 100 and the standard deviation to 15, we can come up with an "IQ" style scale.
As can be seen, using this method Blacks with a graduate degree have a level of verbal intelligence indistinguishable from that of Whites with a junior college degree. Blacks with a four-year degree are roughly on par with Whites who never went to college at all.
IQ BY RACE AND HIGHEST DEGREE EARNED (1972 - 2014):
Highest Degree White IQ Black IQ Gap
High School Drop-out: 89 82 7
High School Diploma 98 90 8
Junior College Degree 102 95 7
Bachelor's Degree 108 100 8
Graduate Degree 113 102 11
This data is consistent with evidence from the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) which administered tests of cognitive ability to 26,000 US adults in 1992. These tests were designed to measure how well people could take information and use it in a way which would help them function in modern society.
Blacks are such poor academic achievers that the National Achievement Scholarship Program was created with lower standards for Black candidates only, instead of the National Merit Scholarship Program which is open to everyone else.
THE SMARTEST STUDENTS: The National Merit Scholarship Program was founded to identify and honor scholastically talented American youth and to encourage them to develop their abilities to the fullest.
BLACK STUDENTS ONLY: The National Achievement Scholarship Program was initiated specifically to identify academically promising Black American youth and encourage their pursuit of higher education.
They are both measured on the PSAT.
Minimum score for National Achievement: 190
Minimum score for National Merit: 220
Roughly, PSAT x 10 = SAT (out of 2400)
Bill Gates, after pulling philanthropic funding from Common Core, "When disaggregated by race, we see two Americas. One where White students perform along the lines of the best in the world with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America, where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece."
Blacks score so poorly on academic exams that colleges give them 230 "race bonus" SAT points to help them qualify for admission.
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Robbie Smith LUCIDANDBLACK • 2 months ago • edited
"I do not believe a lack of IQ is the problem, a lack of planning and preparedness is. My proof of this is my African immigrant tutees are some of the most intelligent, engaged and confident that I have ever worked with."
Here are the facts-
Blacks and Whites with Equal Educational Attainment Differ in Cognitive Ability
Black and White Americans with the same formal level of education differ significantly in their cognitive abilities. Specifically, within any given level of formal education Whites consistently outperform Blacks. Moreover, this effect is so strong that Blacks often underperform Whites who have lower levels of formal education than they do.
Consider the following data from the General Social Survey. This public data is frequently used in social science research and contains a test of verbal intelligence as well as measurements of participant’s self-identified race and highest educational degree obtained. Verbal intelligence tests correlate at around .75 with full-scale IQ and so this data can also be taken as a fair measure of intelligence in general (Lynn, 1998). If we set the White mean score on this test to 100 and the standard deviation to 15, we can come up with an "IQ" style scale.
As can be seen, using this method Blacks with a graduate degree have a level of verbal intelligence indistinguishable from that of Whites with a junior college degree. Blacks with a four-year degree are roughly on par with Whites who never went to college at all.
IQ BY RACE AND HIGHEST DEGREE EARNED (1972 - 2014):
Highest Degree White IQ Black IQ Gap
High School Drop-out: 89 82 7
High School Diploma 98 90 8
Junior College Degree 102 95 7
Bachelor's Degree 108 100 8
Graduate Degree 113 102 11
This data is consistent with evidence from the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) which administered tests of cognitive ability to 26,000 US adults in 1992. These tests were designed to measure how well people could take information and use it in a way which would help them function in modern society.
Blacks are such poor academic achievers that the National Achievement Scholarship Program was created with lower standards for Black candidates only, instead of the National Merit Scholarship Program which is open to everyone else.
THE SMARTEST STUDENTS: The National Merit Scholarship Program was founded to identify and honor scholastically talented American youth and to encourage them to develop their abilities to the fullest.
BLACK STUDENTS ONLY: The National Achievement Scholarship Program was initiated specifically to identify academically promising Black American youth and encourage their pursuit of higher education.
They are both measured on the PSAT.
Minimum score for National Achievement: 190
Minimum score for National Merit: 220
Roughly, PSAT x 10 = SAT (out of 2400)
Bill Gates, after pulling philanthropic funding from Common Core, "When disaggregated by race, we see two Americas. One where White students perform along the lines of the best in the world with achievement comparable to countries like Finland and Korea. And another America, where Black and Latino students perform comparably to the students in the lowest performing OECD countries, such as Chile and Greece."
Blacks score so poorly on academic exams that colleges give them 230 "race bonus" SAT points to help them qualify for admission:
http://www.latimes.com/loca...
https://www.princeton.edu/~...
"Personal scores" are the new subterfuge for artificially assisting Blacks gain admission to universities. Asian-American applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time only in the top academic index decile. By contrast, white applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time in the top six deciles. Hispanics receive such personal scores more than 20% of the time in the top seven deciles, and Blacks receive such scores more than 20% of the time in the top eight deciles.
An otherwise identical applicant bearing an Asian male identity with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 32 percent chance of admission if he were White, a 77 percent chance of admission if he were Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance of admission if he were Black.
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Large-scale meta-analyses by researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that SAT performance is as good of a predictor of overall college grade point average as it is of freshman grade point average, and Vanderbilt researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow have documented that the SAT predicts life outcomes well beyond the college years, including income and occupational achievements.
Furthermore, the SAT is largely a measure of general intelligence. Scores on the SAT correlate very highly with scores on standardized tests of intelligence, and like IQ scores, are stable across time and not easily increased through training, coaching, or practice. SAT preparation courses appear to work, but the gains are small — on average, no more than about 20 points per section.
Vanderbilt University researchers tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13. Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that they are described as a "thinly disguised" intelligence test. The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were "only" in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage.
The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test
"The racial scoring gap on the SAT test has now become wider than has been the case for the past two decades. Many believe that in the years to come the gap may grow smaller, not because blacks are catching up to whites in educational achievement, but rather because the test makers are adding a writing component to the test that may be manipulated to lessen racial differences and therefore reduce public criticisms of the test.
If we eliminate Asians and other minorities from the calculations and compare only Blacks and Whites, we find that 0.2 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above on the verbal SAT compared to 2.2 percent of all White test takers. Thus, Whites were 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Overall, there were 49 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored at or above the 750 level.
On the math SAT, only 0.16 percent of all Black test takers scored 750 or above compared to 1.8 percent of White test takers. Thus, Whites were more than 11 times as likely as Blacks to score 750 or above on the math SAT. Overall, there were more than 61 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored 750 or above on the math section of the SAT.
In a race-neutral competition for the approximately 50,000 places for first-year students at the nation's 25 top-ranked universities, high-scoring Blacks would be buried by a huge mountain of high-scoring non-Black students. Today, under prevailing affirmative action admissions policies, there are about 3,000 Black first-year students matriculating at these 25 high-ranking universities, about 6 percent of all first-year students at these institutions. But if these schools operated under a strict race-neutral admissions policy where SAT scores were the most important qualifying yardstick, these universities could fill their freshman classes almost exclusively with students who score at the very top of the SAT scoring scale. As shown previously, Black students make up at best between 1 and 2 percent of these high-scoring groups."
http://www.jbhe.com/feature...
The Education Trust study shows wide disparities in scores among White and minority students. Nearly 40 percent of Black students and 30 percent of Hispanics don’t pass, compared with 16 percent of Whites.
The average score for Blacks is 38 and for Hispanics is 44, compared to Whites’ average score of 55. The scores reflect the similar racial gaps on other standardized exams.
http://www.washingtontimes....
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Racial Scoring Gap on Standardized Graduate Tests
-- Black Student Score Results on the Medical College Admission Test
In 2005 the mean combined score for Black students who took the Medical College Admission Test was 21.2. (Each of the three sections of the MCAT test is scored on a scale of 1 to 15.) For Whites, the mean score on the combined three portions of the MCAT test was 28.5. Therefore, the White score was about 18 percent higher than the mean score for Blacks.
-- The Racial Scoring Gap on the Test for Admission to Business School
The mean Black score on the GMAT was 425. (The test is scored on the familiar 200 to 800 scale used for each section of the SAT test.) For Whites, the mean GMAT score was 532. This is 107 points or 18 percent higher than the mean score for Blacks.
The average GMAT score for admitted students at the nation's leading business schools is over 700. Perhaps only 1 or 2 percent of all Black GMAT test takers score at this level. Therefore, without continuing affirmative action admissions programs at Harvard, Penn, Stanford, Northwestern, MIT, and other top MBA programs, the nation's leading business schools will have very few Black students.
The latest JBHE survey shows that Blacks make up about 5 percent of the students at the nation's leading business schools. If affirmative action admissions programs were to be discontinued, Black enrollments at these schools might drop by 75 percent.
-- Very Few Blacks Score at the Highest Levels of the Law School Admission Test
In 1998 the mean score of White students taking the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) was 151.96. (The LSAT is graded on a scoring scale of 120 to 180.) The mean score for Black students taking the test that year was 141.80, about 17 percent lower than the mean score of Whites.
The latest data shows a slight improvement for both Blacks and Whites, but there was no progress in closing the racial scoring gap. In 2004 the mean score for Whites on the LSAT was 152.47. For Blacks, the mean score was 142.43. The 10 point, or 17 percent, scoring gap has remained constant throughout the period with only very minor fluctuations.
Students seeking admission to the nation's highest-ranked law schools such as Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have a mean LSAT score of about 170. Data obtained by JBHE from the Law School Admission Council shows that very few Blacks nationwide score at this level.
In 2004, 10,370 Blacks took the LSAT examination. Only 29 Blacks, or 0.3 percent of all LSAT test takers, scored 170 or above. In contrast, more than 1,900 White test takers scored 170 or above on the LSAT. They made up 3.1 percent of all White test takers. Thus Whites were more than 10 times as likely as Blacks to score 170 or above on the LSAT. There were 66 times as many Whites as Blacks who scored 170 or above on the test.
Even if we drop the scoring level to 165, a level equal to the mean score of students enrolling at law schools ranked in the top 10 nationwide but not at the very top, we still find very few Blacks. There were 108 Blacks scoring 165 or better on the LSAT in 2004. They made up 1 percent of all Black test takers. For Whites, there were 6,689 test takers who scored 165 or above. They made up 10.6 percent of all White students who took the LSAT examination.
The nation's top law schools could fill their classes exclusively with students who scored 165 or above on the LSAT. But if they were to do so, these law schools would have almost no Black students.
-- The Racial Scoring Gap on the Graduate Record Examination
The vast majority of Black graduate students do not attend professional schools of law, business, or medicine. Most Black students are enrolled in graduate programs in other academic disciplines including education, natural sciences, mathematics, foreign languages, the humanities, the arts, history, psychology, and the social sciences. For these students the important test is the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).
This test begins with two analytical writing sections, one where the student is given a choice of topics. The analytical writing section is scored on a scale of 0 to 6. Then there is a 30-minute verbal reasoning test and a 45-minute quantitative section. The test is given on a computer terminal and the test is adaptive, meaning that the test questions are selected based on correct or incorrect responses to previous questions. These two sections are scored on the familiar 200 to 800 scale used for the SAT test.
Each year about 300,000 college students seeking admission to graduate programs in fields such as education, the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences sit for the GRE. In 2003, the latest year for which there is complete data available, 27,267 Blacks took the GRE test. Therefore, Blacks made up 8.8 percent of all students who took the GRE.
In 2003 the mean score for Blacks on the combined verbal and quantitative sections of the GRE was 821. For Whites, the mean combined score was 1062. Thus the mean White score was 241 points, or 20 percent, higher than the mean score for Blacks. This racial scoring gap is even wider than the persistent and growing gap on the SAT test.
In 2003 the mean Black score on the analytical writing section was 3.7 on a scale of 0 to 6. For Whites, the mean score was 4.5, a difference of about 13 percent. There is no way to compare the trend in the gap on this portion of the GRE because the 0 to 6 scale was recently instituted. Previously the analytical section of the test was scored on the 200 to 800 scale.
The GRE scoring gap between Blacks and Whites varies to a large degree depending on the field of proposed study in graduate school. Black students planning to study in the field of engineering scored on average 187 points below whites who plan to pursue a graduate degree in engineering. In the physical sciences, Black students on average scored 247 points below Whites.
-- Effects of Affirmative Action
Quota admittees drop out more often, avoid college science and math, and flunk post-graduation professional tests.
The SAT scores of White applicants to U.S. colleges and universities have been, on average, about 200 points higher than those of their Black counterparts. Nonetheless, Black students have been admitted to virtually all academically competitive schools at much higher rates than Whites. At Amherst College in 1995, for instance, 51 percent of Black applicants were admitted vs. just 19 percent of White applicants. At Rice University that same year, the corresponding numbers were 52 percent and 25 percent for Blacks and Whites, respectively. At Bowdoin College, the figures were 70 percent and 30 percent.
At the five most elite American colleges, Black applicants whose SAT scores fell within the 1200 to 1249 range had a 60 percent chance of admission, whereas Whites with similar scores had just a 19 percent chance.
At medical schools the situation is much the same. The Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) scores of Blacks who are accepted are actually lower than those of Whites who are rejected. At the University of Maryland Medical School in 2000, Blacks with college GPAs of B or B+ and MCAT scores in the bottom half of all test-takers had a 70 percent chance of admission; for Whites and Asians of similar credentials, the chance was 2 percent.
At America's top law schools, Blacks are admitted at fully 17 times the rate that a colorblind process would allow. At UCLA Law School in 1994, a Black applicant with a college GPA between 2.5 and 3.5, and an LSAT score between 60 and 90, had a 61 percent chance of admission. The corresponding rates for similarly qualified Asians and Whites were 7 percent and 1 percent, respectively. Consider also Texas Law School, which in 1992 rejected 668 White applicants before rejecting a single Black. Fully 100 percent of Blacks who scored between 189 and 192 in the school’s academic rating system were admitted, as compared to just 6 percent of Whites.
So-called "diversity degrees" were created with soft curricula to allow Blacks an easier opportunity to earn a degree than is possible in the hard sciences.
http://www.jbhe.com/news_vi...
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Robbie Smith LUCIDANDBLACK • 2 months ago
"My proof of this is my African immigrant tutees are some of the most intelligent, engaged and confident that I have ever worked with."
Based on what?
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Robbie Smith LUCIDANDBLACK • 2 months ago
Whites are only 10% of the world's population and the only race in population decline (creating only 7% of the world's babies), yet are the most industrious and innovative race the world has known. Whites unlocked the secrets of DNA and relativity, launched satellites, created automation, discovered electricity and nuclear energy, invented automobiles, aircraft, submarines, radio, television, computers, medicine, telephones, light bulbs, photography, and countless other technological miracles. Whites were the first to circumnavigate the planet by ship, orbit it by spacecraft, walk on the moon, probe beyond the solar system, climb the highest peaks, reach both poles, exceed the sound barrier, descend to the oceans depths... Blacks cannot even feed themselves.
Whites created countries for Blacks, but now have to provide food, medical, financial, and engineering aid to every Black country. Blacks cannot survive without White charity.
No pre-contact Black society ever created a written language, or weaved cloth, or forged steel, or invented the wheel, or plow, or devised a calendar, or code of laws, or system of measurement, or math, or built a multi-story structure, or sewer, or drilled a well, or irrigated, or created any agriculture, or built a road, or sea-worthy vessel. They never domesticated animals, or exploited underground natural resources, or produced anything that could be considered a mechanical device.
Blacks were still living in the Stone Age when Whites discovered them just 400 years ago.
Blacks are the oldest race, so they should be the most advanced — but they never advanced at all. Sub-Saharan Africans never made any contribution to the world. Everything they have was given to them by Whites. Blacks lived alone in Africa, a vast continent with temperate climates and abundant resources for 60,000 years so they cannot blame slavery, racism, colonialism, culture, environment, or anything else for their failures.
Simply, life is an IQ test.
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Chiefy_24 • 3 months ago • edited
Uh this is a very dangerous slope. Affirmative action for the hard sciences will not end well. Medicine and engineering require a certain intellect and cognitive capabilities. Ones skin color should never be part of this equation. Your life depends on it!!
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permafrost Chiefy_24 • 3 months ago
Lives do depend on it; that's why women and ppl of color often get overlooked by doctors who don't ask the right questions, or diminish their physical symptoms as being "in their head". We need greater diversity, esp in medicine and behavioral health, because the provider's background often helps them relate better to patients.
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Chiefy_24 permafrost • 3 months ago
Where is your empirical data to support such a supposition? You are proposing social engineering in medicine and the hard sciences. Please read the Diversity Delusion to gain a deeper insight. I work in healthcare and I’m telling you this is a very dangerous slope. Merit based must be prima facia in medicine. Everything else is a distant second. Be careful what you wish for.
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jacky Chiefy_24 • 2 months ago
Dead right! No pun intended!
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Preda permafrost • 2 months ago
You may need diversity -- but nothing speaks against well trained black doctors. They exist, not only in the US. Which proves it is possible, without changing curriculum or pretending that chemistry and mathematics or physics should be different according to race.
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drsobko permafrost • 2 months ago
Discrimnation & Disparities by Thomas Sowell should convince you otherwise
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Chiefy_24 Guest • 3 months ago
Being a student of data I thank you for such empirical data. Unfortunately leftists care more about social engineering than factual data and reality. I’ve worked in Corporate America for 35+ years and I have seen the insidious infiltration of affirmative action, diversity and inclusion. Intersectionality has no finite cohort. This is not going to end well for society.
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v_user Chiefy_24 • 2 months ago
And that empirical data simply vanished. As does any empirical data which doesn't support certain ideologies.
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Newspaniard • 3 months ago
Science and math are "complicated" subjects which require a bit of effort to learn and teach. When we have students who think that socialism and underwater knitting and media studies are sufficient to get them degrees and then they go into education and find STEM subjects too difficult to teach properly and as a consequence blame the subjects as racist, how can we blame them? The students get poor results because their teachers don't know the subjects and would/have spent their student years smoking pot and demonstrating. I feel sorry for the fee paying students who expect better of their universities.
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steve coon • 3 months ago
I certainly am the victim of math oppression although as a white, aging, male some will reject my claim. But, to quote the Declaration of Independence, “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”
As a fifth grade student, my math class was required to complete assignments correctly during the hour we met. Successful students were permitted to walk to the blackboard and write their names in creative fashion—as evidence of their mastery of computation and illustrating their artistic talent as well.
Those of us who failed to answer the math problems correctly were denied this reward. Instead, our teacher would write our names under the day of the week in the upper left corner of the blackboard for all to see.
Our names would remain emblazed in thick, white, chalk letters under the day of the week until we had corrected our work.
As the week progressed but I did not, I was embarrassed to see that my fellow underperforming classmates’ names disappeared from the corner of shame but mine remained.
Many a Friday would see my name alone still inscribed under the preceding days of the week. Evidence that I was the sole member of my elementary class who had failed the grasp the mysteries of math.
The fact that one of our children has two degrees in math has modified my pain somewhat. But it has not erased the conviction that I am the victim of an oppressive math education.
Were I younger, I would move to Seattle, enroll in the public school system and most likely see my history repeated. But then I would have the opportunity to cry foul and demand reparations.
Alas, time has passed me by. But I still am a victim.
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mrychr steve coon • 3 months ago
Your problem arose out of the twisted mind of a terrible teacher, not the math curriculum.
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drsobko steve coon • 2 months ago
Where does the assumption of everybody has to be good at everything come from?
We are not automatons. You are most probably very skilled in areas where others struggle. Identity is embracing what we are and accepting what what we are not.
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steve coon drsobko • 2 months ago
You are absolutely correct. I have had a successful life outside of mathematics. Others are equally blessed to discover their gifts or to try successfully to master a challenge. Thank you for the reminder.
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Amy Mader steve coon • 3 months ago
I feel sorry for you that, that happened but it was not the teachers fault look at your parents. You needed help and to figure out the strategies how to learn math in your way. I went through the same thing with reading in the early 70', I have dyslexia. The teachers told my mom I was stupid but she took me to WSU which was 3 hours away and had me tested and then they were just realizing what it was. It was confirmed I had it and my brother, so my mom and my teacher and the school went to work and helped me and many others find our own way how to read. I went into a separate room for reading, which at the time was traumatizing because you were seen as special ed kid. I could not read out loud because there were a lot of words I could not read. My eyes did a wave on the paper or book so the reading did not make sense and it took a long time to read a sentence. I hated to read, but I over came it and worked hard on my reading graduated from college and run my own business. People need to start teaching their kids others can not do the work for you, if you want a good life you need to do the work your self and figure it out!!!!!!! Stop blaming others for your miss fortunes.
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steve coon Amy Mader • 3 months ago
I'm sorry that you feel that I have been unfortunate. The opposite is true. I've lived a blessed life, accomplished much and am pleased with the outcome. Yes, my legacy--to use the overused term--is good.
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Laura steve coon • 3 months ago
I feel your pain and experienced similar. Then, many many years later when my own children were in school, I saw a post about the "new math" and scoffed...until someone on the thread explained the rationale for it. And suddenly I understood a bit of math I'd never understood before. Personally, I feel that having access to different methods of coming to the same conclusions, even if those conclusions and means are from another culture, can only serve to help kids even more. Every kid learns in different ways. Maybe if I'd been taught some of that "new math" when I was in school, I wouldn't to this day still be terrified of numbers.
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steve coon Laura • 3 months ago
Thank you for contributing to the discussion. Perhaps the "new math" might have helped me, too.
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Preda steve coon • 2 months ago
A new teacher might have done the job to. When someone has obstinate problems with maths, it may very well be the kind of math questions asked which are too obstinate, and the student needing some attention. There is something like math talent, but anti-talent is rather created.
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Sally murphy steve coon • 3 months ago
I saw this same thing happen to the same children throughout school. Humiliation made these children have to show they were tough and it didn't bother them, in order to survive, all the while having their guts churning with humiliation and shame. I am sure that was why they pretended to. Not care and that became the norm. And those children went through school that way.
Someone should have recognized what was happening to those children, and gotten them some extra help.It could have made the difference between graduati on and dropping out.
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steve coon Sally murphy • 3 months ago
Thank you adding to this discssion.
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justme1212 steve coon • 3 months ago
That is like blaming a car for running down a pedestrian. So misplaced.
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steve coon justme1212 • 3 months ago
I don't understand your analogy. But I guess I don't need to.
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Cristobal Molina steve coon • 3 months ago
Car = Math.
Car driver = Your elitist math teacher. (The actual opressor).
Pedestrian = You.
Not just math mysteries eluded you after all.
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Vernon France Cristobal Molina • 23 days ago
I don't blame Mr. Coon for not understanding your vague original statement. You did not explain who was the car driver, the pedestrian or the car in your original statement.
I am not good at math, particularly, but as a career teacher of English and Spanish I see how he failed to understand your analogy without further amplification.
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Buford Gooch • 3 months ago
Common core has been an outstanding success, if you accept that its purpose was to dumb down the population.
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Vernon France Buford Gooch • 23 days ago
I believe that there is an ongoing attempt to destroy our educational system with gobbledy gook replacing tried and true methods of grouping students and teaching them. I do not blame this on true conservatives but on the power brokers who want us all to be ignorant and easily manipulated fools except for the oligarchs' children. Look how the current Secretary of Education is trying to destroy even the already substandard public schools.
A teacher is now expected to take a very diverse group of students on many different achievement levels and teach them all together. That is like expecting a sheep dog to be able to herd sheep, llamas and gazelles into the same enclosure.
As a Spanish teacher I was given classes with Native Speakers of Spanish coming from excellent academic backgrounds with Native Speakers from poor backgrounds and the same with English Speakers all in the same Spanish class. And that does not even include the widely different motivation levels they had. Making matters worse, those who failed the first semester were kept in the same class till the bitter end of the year, getting further and further behind.
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jacky Buford Gooch • 2 months ago
Commie core
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Vernon France jacky • 23 days ago
Totally inaccurate. There is absolutely no evidence that so called communists were poor at teaching math or that they tried to use techniques such as those we call "common core."
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彭泽横琴 • 3 months ago
"Let no one ignorant of geometry enter" How can people who have never studied mathematics have the ability to have complex logical thinking in the future?
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Ilbert Phillips • 3 months ago
This is why everyone else in the world is kicking our ass in math, primarily the Chinese, Korean and Japanese. This is really stupid. I just saw an announcement that an eight year old Mexican girl (from Mexico) won a math contest in China. She solved a series of problems mentally. What with these educators?
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jacky Ilbert Phillips • 2 months ago
MArthur gave out out ,*math curriculum, John Dewey ruined ours!?
*to japan
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AmHistoryTeacher • 3 months ago
Elitist Democrat controlled School Boards, failing to provide equal opportunity for students, HAVE DECLARED MATHEMATICS RACIST as deflection from their incompetence and tax dollars waste, therefore, insuring equality of outcomes, MEDIOCRITY and future FAILURE in life. Honors programs based on merit are under attack as “racist”; strong students are bussed to under performing schools to fraudulently improve overall test scores. These are the same Democrat controlled School Boards that think your kindergartner should be taught anal sex and promote gender choice surgery for children. George Soros is behind many of these Democrat School Board movements, finding them easier to
emotionally manipulate than the fed gov. Soros' et al long game is mediocre serfdom. PARENTS, WAKE UP; you have too trustingly abdicated your authority and responsibility to the soulless amoral Left too long; School Boards should
reflect local community standards, not Leftist social engineering.
https://dailycaller.com/201... https://www.dailysignal.com... https://www.toddstarnes.com...
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jerseydave • 3 months ago
So, teach kids to learn a subject, by teaching them to hate it and anyone who wants to teach it. Brilliant. Maoist Cadre tactics do not end well for any nation. The only math involved after a wave of Maoism sweeps a land is adding up the millions of dead.
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Seeker of Truth • 3 months ago
Well, it IS the Left Coast.
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Angry Swede • 3 months ago
If they want to call it racist, they must be by their own term "xenophobic", considering a large amount of mathematics comes out of the Middle East when the Abbasid Dynasty was having a growth spurt of knowledge.
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Seeker of Truth Angry Swede • 3 months ago
Knowledge of Math goes much further back than that. They're finding these ancient pyramids all over the world now with pools of mercury beneath them. Even the pyramid of the sun in Mexico City was found to have a large pool of mercury deep down beneath it, as is the case with the 1st dynasty ancient pyramid in China. The Chinese people say it was built by space travelers. So, math must have been brought to us by ancient aliens.
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Hontas Farmer Seeker of Truth • 2 months ago
Uh no. Math probably originated with the age old problem of counting ones children or herd/tribe/group. Even ducks do it.
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Hontas Farmer Angry Swede • 2 months ago
Exactly. However, reading this comment section one can see there are plenty of people, of boomer age, who never learned that all math did not originate in Europe. Notice the original author seems hard pressed to come up with a non western example when Algebra would be a good one. Or how about 0 that didn't come from Europe. Neither did 1-9 those are from India.
Do people really not know that?
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Wes Howell • 3 months ago
Let me ask you Seattle? Do you expect me to hire these folks with my money? LMAO...better keep the parents healthy to feed these little skulls of mush as they wont be able to care for themselves. You Libs want to make your people stupid and dependent. Me? I'll take a spiked bat for $600 Alex...
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Honest Abraham • 3 months ago
Moral cowardice and intellectually dishonest. Not to mention Spineless, pathetic and weak. People of the west, where are your balls? Your ancestors would be ashamed. Are there any honest, strong minds still existing on the left other than Sam Harris, Bill Maher or the Weinstein brothers? I will continue to raise my young children to be strong, courageous and truth seeking, and while your children obsess over their victim-hood, mine will bull doze right past your brittle spawn. However, for the good of all our sakes, I hope the pendulum swings back, away from this destructive ideology.
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LeftyMathProf • 3 months ago
I agree that math is used to oppress -- but not in any of the ways hinted at by this article. Here is how math is oppressive:
Open any "conventional" (i.e., capitalist) textbook on economics. You'll see that it's filled with equations, from cover to cover. And it's all wrong. But what is wrong is not really in the math. What is wrong is in the assumptions that are made (perhaps without being stated explicitly) before any math is ever applied. What's wrong is in the choice of what questions are being asked and answered. What's wrong is in what the math is being used FOR. "Conventional" economics is devoted to making my company richer, not to making my society healthier and happier. Perhaps one of the assumptions is that those two goals are somehow connected.
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Tom Schwarz LeftyMathProf • 3 months ago
Btw, did you see the Soviet Russian math for water distribution?
Socialism/communism uses math to try and limit supplies, which have often resulted in millions starving or dying of thirst.
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Tom Schwarz LeftyMathProf • 3 months ago • edited
Uh, how does a Math professor confuse math with economics?
Also I’ve opened many an economics book in my day and they are very sparse on the equations.
In short, I think you might have butt chugged the socialism koolaid.
Sad when teachers fall for such idiocy
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Judy M Morton • 3 months ago
We have to make mathematics a major goal of the schools. My simple solution is teachers are required to stay after school with their poor math achievers until the homework is understood and completed. Teachers with 95% or less students who are not proficient do not get to continue teaching the next year.
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Seeker of Truth Judy M Morton • 3 months ago • edited
Those poor teachers would have to sleep there! You're putting all the responsibility on the teacher, while the kids might just be stupid, uncooperative or lazy.
By the way, the correct grammar is "95% or 'fewer' students . . . ."
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NutherGuy Judy M Morton • 3 months ago • edited
And in three years we're out of teachers.
Now you could question whether 'out of teachers' is a bad thing -- there are more people who'd be effective as teachers OUTSIDE the profession than in -- but 'out' would be the result.
What you're missing is that students do not all have the same ability to learn. There are various ways to manage that and in many systems today, the worst approach is chosen. ALL children, from a couple of severe behavior problems right on up -- are placed in the same classes. This is called 'mainstreaming' and it is supposed to produce more equitable results. Which it does: The behavior problem kids, the very slow learners, the average kids, and the couple who are very bright all learn close to nothing and the best teachers are gone within three years.
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Seeker of Truth NutherGuy • 3 months ago • edited
The high school I attended (from 1961 - 1965) when the public school system was still good and before forced school busing, used to manage all the kids in our leading edge Baby Boomer class of 600 kids this way: The first year, we were all bundled together in homerooms and classes. The next year, we found ourselves separated. All the smart kids were put into the same homerooms, and the children of a lesser god were housed in the disruptive homerooms. They put the smart kids in pilot or experimental classes with the enthusiastic teachers; the kids of a lesser god were put in less demanding classes elsewhere. The civil rights laws were enacted during that time period forcing the capable and the disruptive kids into classes together again. The parents of the capable kids started pulling their children out of the public school system and enrolling them in private schools. Nobody wanted to sacrifice their children's education because of a socialist ideology that does not work.
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Hontas Farmer Seeker of Truth • 2 months ago
I really doubt that merely sitting next to black kids is the issue. I am black. I teach science in the city of Chicago and developmental math in the whitest suburbs of Chicago. There are students struggling in every community with mathematics. The problem is that math has not been taught right at the K-8 level. So they get to high school with no exposure to anything beyond arithmetic.
Keep on thinking it is a racial issue only.
That said, it has been a problem in some locations that the history of math is taught as if only white people did anything. Numbers 0-9 weren't invented in Europe just for starters.
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HilldaBeast • 3 months ago
Good ..... God !
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Richard Bickleberry • 3 months ago
Okay, who's the WASP that let the cat out of the bag? We were not supposed to let POC know about how we use math to our advantage until after 2043. Prepare the doomsday device!
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Cynthia Campbell • 3 months ago
Just because most blacks dont have the brain power or inclination or drive to want to understand tough subjects, I'd all on them. Let the whites and Asians leave them in the dust. We need to sterilize all black and white women who have been on welfare for over 2 years
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carrstone • 3 months ago
I would write a wise comment but I'm laughing too hard.
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9omoore9 • a month ago
IMO Common Core math was designed to protect unqualified math teachers, not to enlighten students. n particular, many grade seven and eighth grade math teachers are unable to prepare students for freshman algebra and geometry.
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9omoore9 • a month ago
IMO, Core Math was designed to obscure the fact that many seventh and eighth grade instructors lack basic math skills. I note that failed systems rely heavily on racial statistics that show that certain minorities do poorly in math as the foundation to scream race and thereby deflect responsibility. For example, non English speaking immigrants do poorly in math, but does that indicate that racism is afoot. I think not. Just one example. We need tax incentives to reward smart people to become qualified math instructors.
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Romeo • a month ago
If you don't teach MATH, then you cannot count your money from your paycheck!!! How can minorities get a job if they cannot count???...The answer is that CAPITALISM IS EVIL!!!!!!>>>>NOW, do you get it????.....That was a tough puzzle to solve!!!!.....The ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT needs to destroy borders, cause chaos, dilute WHITE people from Europe and the USA, mock Christianity, praise G.Soros, and force EVERY country to SURRENDER IT'S SOVEREIGNTY and get "absorbed by body" (as Kirk said in STAR TREK) "It is the will of Landrew"!!!....Or in this case, the will of liberal DEMOCRAPS being used by the ONE WORLD FEDERAL GOVERNMENT treasonous traitors!!!!!! And here is your PROOF!!!! https://www.youtube.com/wat... (Barbara Spectre).......And more PROOF!!!! https://www.youtube.com/wat... Hillary and Cronkite)
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c094728 • a month ago
This is one of the hundreds of reasons I voted for Trump. Liberslism is a mental disorder.
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Mike Everest • 2 months ago
Math is just a tool--like shovel, rope, fork. Is rope racist? Because Rope was used to lynch slaves? Then we should call Rope the Rope-supremacist. Next time you get a hard-on looking at a black women, cut off your penis, because penis is used for sex--making your penis is racist. Vice Versa, if you are a white women, and you get aroused seeing a black-man, use cement to fill in your vagina! your vagina is a tool used to screw black-man--then it is racist. See how stupid is this, it is insane. I still think, this stupid idea is as stupid as Adam Schiff's impeachment hoax. Further, I have a suggestion for Left and Democrat party, don't use anything that math was used to build, like cars, planes, toaster, heater, AC, fridge, home, and medicine!
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Hontas Farmer • 2 months ago
The thought that math education is racist is just as asinine as this article. I'd say in about middle school, and we are sure everyone knows arithmetic, teaching about algebra and geometry, mentioning their historical uses would be good.
The Pythagorean theorem while proven by Pythagoras was known to other civilizations since it played a role in building their buildings. Can't build a Ziggurat or a Pyramid without it.
The numbers 1-9 were invented in India, and came to Europe by way of the Arabs. Algebra it self is named in Arabic yet certainly the basics of solving for an unknown were known before them. Teaching about the historical applications could make the math more relevant to students. Students of all colors, from urban Chicago to suburban Naperville IL hate math because it seems irrelevant ... solving for X where X is who gives a flying eff!
That said. Teaching some social justice BS about how math is oppression would be a waste of time.
Math itself is not oppressive. If it was taught like it was all invented in Greece, then used by the Romans, then improved in the renaissance (with numbers 0-9 appearing magically and without mention of the Arabs or east India or that 0 came from both the Mayans and East India) would be racist. Only a fool would teach it that way. Lets hope they get the right story and don't just replace one Eurocentric story with a social justice BS story.
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Victor Andrès Croquer Scopesi • 2 months ago
I can hardly cope with the fact that there can be such a discussion after the middle age. Living in Italy though, you learn some things and so I can see why some schools or the entire state of california would do that: if kids are presented tests where half (or a little more) of the points come from answering 'non math' questions (whose correct universal answer is that everything is racism) I can already see their scores skyrocketing. 🤣😂 I guess an integration with social studies could solve the same score problem for any subject...
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Trond Larsen • 2 months ago
Common core is not an educational curriculum. It is a political one.
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Waggler • 2 months ago
Al Gebra would not know what is meant by the term Western Math.
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NutherGuy • 3 months ago
"... in California [changing the curriculum and adding teachers who know how to teach math]
will be almost impossible to implement in practice."
Because California does not want to improve math outcomes. Racial wokeness, contempt for the American ideal, the hopelessness that comes from having no place in an increasingly techological world, all these are more important than math outcomes.
It takes no knowledge of math to defecate on the street or -- if you're of the other persuasion -- avoid stepping where someone has done so.
Perspective. It's all about understanding the California perspective.
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Seeker of Truth NutherGuy • 3 months ago • edited
Math ability falls from the sky like "Manna." People who don't have a "receptor" for math won't get it beyond the very basics -- regardless of who's trying to teach them. Artists have a "receptor" for drawing & painting; musicians have a "receptor" for music; philosophers have a "receptor" for deep thinking. These abilities are "built in." Come to think of it, there is plenty of math in music and art. When I draw a portrait, I'm subconsciously constantly measuring the planes of the face and feeling the solid geometry of the head. When I sing a song, I'm constantly making mathematical adjustments in terms of volume, texture and richness, just as I vary the thickness of a line in drawing. On the other hand, my older sister was always math-challenged and had such a hard time learning it, but she had perfect pitch when she sang, could play every musical instrument she picked up and was also a very good artist, so she was "using" math all the time without understanding it from a textbook. My other siblings were engineers, math teachers and scientists. They all can draw, except for the scientist (but maybe she never tried). I don't think any other than my older sister and I can sing, but maybe they just never tried. I'm going to ask them to try! It might just be an embarrassment issue. So much for my theories.
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NutherGuy Seeker of Truth • 3 months ago • edited
Talent -- intrinsic capacity, independent of training/education -- cannot be denied. Taken together my wife and I lack artistic ability of any sort but we cover just about everything else. But I'm often clueless about what's going on in human situations that she reads like a book. On the other hand her ability to do math of any sort or even to predict how far in advance to leave for an appointment or what a given action will ultimately cost ranges from slight to nearly undetectable.
And yet training and education DO make a difference in the ability to use talents. If California actually wanted better math from its graduates it absolutely could have that.
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Seeker of Truth NutherGuy • 3 months ago • edited
I agree that training and education do make a difference in the ability to use innate talents, but the basic receptor has to be there in the first place. When I can stop laughing, to get his opinion, I'm going to email this unbelievable article to my brother, the math teacher, a man who has taught math all over the world from little African villages in the Peace Corps. to private international schools for the richest kids in London and Istanbul (where he picked up an American teacher wife along the way). Their two kids have experienced the world and are the most open-minded, non-racist kids you'll ever meet. By the way, it's interesting that although their kids have had the privilege of having had not one, but two teachers for parents, including one math professor, one of the kids is great at math, and the other one is well, not so much! This wasn't for lack of my brother trying to get that child up to speed. My brother found he could only do so much.
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YUPPER • 3 months ago
"Man does not learn from standing on the shoulders of intellectual giants", said the liberal midget.
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Conway Redding • 3 months ago
More arrant stupidity from a product of one of our fine purveyors of doctorates in education, intended to explain, and to remedy, the fact that, in the main, members of certain minority groups tend to have trouble with math. Of course, teaching them that math is racist and oppressive is likely to make them think, "Why should we be bothered with something that's so evil?", an attitude that will motivate them to avoid the subject entirely. What rot.
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Seeker of Truth Conway Redding • 3 months ago
Some people are smart and some aren't. Don't blame the messenger.
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Michael Paul Schaefer • 3 months ago
Hm. That might be a slippery slope for common core, since using an abacus as a calculator allows for faster “in your head “ calculations. None of the older cultures spent as much time on this “show your work “ stuff.
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Gourmando • 3 months ago
37% is 150% of 25%, rather better than guesswork.
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A patriot Gourmando • 3 months ago
Oh well, that makes it all better then, huh? You think 37% of kids having the ability to do BASIC math, I mean BASIC.. taught in the 5-6th grade, is ok? Make excuses, point out errors, it doesn’t change the facts. And these kids, the ones who cannot even do basic math, will one day be the primary generation. Running the country, businesses, and governments. These will be the ppl teaching the NEXT generation. Sorry but I’d like to have a pool greater than 37% to pull from to run the country.
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Jacques Lebeau Gourmando • 3 months ago
Nice try. 37% is 12% better than a result based entirely on chance. This could be interpreted to mean only 12% of respondents actually got the correct answer by doing the math rather than by chance. At best, if everyone actually derived the answer mathematically, it means that slightly more than one in three grade 11 students can do basic math. Pretty scary.
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Doesn't Matter Jacques Lebeau • 3 months ago
I don't think you understand percent increases. A boost from 25% to 37% definitely is a 150% increase relative to the 25% starting point. 150% of 25% is 37.5% to be exact, but 37% is a close enough approximation.
If you drop the % signs then it becomes a little more clear why it is correct: 37.5 is 150% of 25. Or, 25 * 1.5 = 37.5. 12% is the difference between the two percentages, but it doesn't measure difference in scale, which is what Gourmando was using.
Also, no, statistics doesn't work that way. There is no guarantee that random guesses with 4 possible answers will land at or around 25% and treating the data as such is a misuse of it. On top of that, even if only 25% of random guessers got the correct answer, and 25% of the people who took these tests got the correct answer through random guessing, that would put the number of people who got it wrong through guessing at 75%, so the 12% difference would have to put the total sum percentage of these mutually exclusive groups at 112%. You cannot have 112% of a group out of that select group.
Rez Zircon Gourmando • 3 months ago
Or. how to lie with statistics.
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