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Dumbing down schools for equity

Puppycow said:
In California, the latest idea is that colleges will no longer consider SAT scores in their admissions process. So a high SAT score will no longer get you into college.
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It's about time:

The SATs Are Designed to Be Racist. Here’s How (The Amber Ruffin Show, Sep 18, 2021)

 
autumn1971 said:
You are incorrect. Counting (up or down depending on where you’re from) is much more efficient in time and also reduces errors from the extra step of entering the tendered amount.

Quicker and more accurate seem to me to validate the hour or so it takes a functional human to learn it. ETA: the option of entering the tendered amount is still available if the cashier is confused or hung-over or whatever.
There is no scenario where being a good cashier is less efficient. At the very least it is exactly as efficient.

Plus, all customers are thieves and scam-artists, so **** them
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This is the part that I think is a little off. It is indeed quick to learn, but as I mentioned it only saves time if the cashier does it routinely, and I just don't think it happens enough to get the repetitions needed for it to become second nature. If I were running a store I would consider it a bad idea to encourage my cashiers to attempt this--and yes, **** the scam artists, and one of the ways to do that is to rely on procedure rather than the wits of the cashier, even if mine are the smartest in the business. Enter in exactly what the customer gave you, so that if a dispute arises--honest or ill-intentioned--the customer's and cashier's exact action is what was saved on record, and will most closely match the video footage.

As a result I don't see how it's a meaningful part of being a "good cashier" to have that talent. It doesn't detract, but there's little reason to lament its absence.
 
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If given the opportunity I would rename this thread Dumbing down Schools for Equity is Not Equitable. The problem I am trying to highlight is that the word "equity" has serious barriers to critical review even if the policies that include "equity" in the name increases racism.

That is why when I highlighted issues of systematic racism, I could get labeled racist with lots of bolding and highlighting, even while the accuser activity defends sytematic racism systems. I don't blame her, bless her heart, as propaganda for party loyalty is far more powerful than the goals off that party.

However, as a lifelong Democrat, my goal is to make my party stronger. There are many areas where Democrats seek to make improvements only to make thighs worse off. It is not beneficial to blindly defend Democrats while defending their shortcomings.

When policies by Democrats increase Systematic Racism, it is beneficial to point out or and address it. Rather than follow through with Systematic Racism policies if you think that raising alarms might reflect poorly on the party that implemented them.
 
Butter! said:
No, it has happened to me. More than once. I've been the dumb young cashier that snooty old dads pull this move on. Then they'd try to give me a patronizing math lesson, loudly, on the spot. Sometimes, their wives would at least grant me the dignity of looking embarrassed to be with them.

My own father has come home / over bitching about these exact same types of interactions too, over the years. Use your ******* credit card, if it bothers you so much DAD.

The thing is, I actually don't think most cashiers freeze up when they're given weird change because they are dumb. It's just unexpected, and they're often not sure why someone is giving them an odd configuration. Plus, there's usually a big line they're expected to keep moving. I think this kind of transaction should be alluded to in training, so that new workers will recognize it.
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So what are we up to, an anecdote of 4-5 cases?


But yes, every subsequent generation is ruining the world, everyone younger than me is bad, etc.
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:D
 
Thermal said:
Absolutely stunned that it took this long for someone else to realize this. There is no change-counting skill, or lost esoteric arts, or even math. The cashier merely enters the amount tendered, $2.01 for the $1.76 purchase, and the register reads $.25 change. That's it.
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And if you get $2.01, how many times does it take for a cashier to catch on?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
So what are we up to, an anecdote of 4-5 cases
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Mike! and I brought it up for the same reason (presumably): to ask if others see this too? My kids and I see it frequently enough to comment on.

Demanding studies is kind of stupid though. I seriously doubt anyone has been dedicating funds to studying cashier thought processes.

Skeptic Ginger said:
And if you get $2.01, how many times does it take for a cashier to catch on?
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I assume you mean 'give' $2.01, not 'get'? If so, how the hell would I know what the rest of the cashier's day goes like? You think I stand there buying small coffees over and over
for hours?

If I were to guess, I'd say 3/4 of the cashiers would need no explanation and understand what was being done. Of the remaining 1/4, the majority would be on autopilot and just enter the $2.01 and give back the quarter that the register told them was the change.

A very very small minority would stop and argue with the customer once or twice before catching on, then not do it again. That would make such a sighting as rare as a four leaf clover in the wild, that you might run across once in a decade.

Since the thread started, it has happened to me twice. The second time the cashier meticulously counted out twenty five cents in nickels and pennies (there were plenty of quarters visible in the till). I did not say a single word to her but "hi", and to answer "that's it" when she asked if that was all I was buying.
 
Could be they were managing to the stash--even plenty of quarters can dry up quick when people like me show up and want five or six at a time to get water from the machine outside.
 
Possible, I suppose. Of course the machines take bills, and drinks are $1 now IIRC.

There are a lot of possible explanations. I was mostly curious how many others noticed something similar. Replies here go from 'doesn't happen/urban myth' to the 'Behold the Lost Skill of Counting Coins'.
 
Going way back to the OP,....my own fractions anecdote.

My modern physics prof at the University of Illinois was kind of a cranky, irritable sort of person. After handing back exams one day, he was berating us for our stupidity. Seriously. There was one particular misdeed he was especially adamant about. Some huge number is students, maybe 1/3? had added 1/2+1/3 and gotten either 1/5 or 1/6. He concluded, "That's why I drive a Toyota".

Ok. Just to put it in context, U of I was one of the top engineering schools in the country. We weren't MIT, but we were in the next tier. So, that room really was full of the best and the brightest. Does it mean that our schools were putting out idiots?

No. It means that 18 year olds make dumb mistakes when they are in a hurry. We all knew that 1/2 was more than 1/5, but a fair number of people were racing through a problem under time pressure.

I'm pretty sure that more than half of Americans knew that 1/3 was bigger than 1/4. I just suspect that in the midst of a focus group, some people gave hasty and imprecise answers, and the marketers decided that a good summary to the A&W executives would be, "you had a great plan, but your customers were too stupid to understand it."

One other thing that makes me suspicious of the anecdote is that I remember "Papa Burgers" at A&W in the 1960s. The anecdote makes it sound like it was a name invented to avoid fractionally challenged Americans in the 1980s.

Basically, I share the concerns of the OP. I just don't think the evidence presented really proves it is happening in a way that needs to be a cause of concern.
 
Thermal said:
I assume you mean 'give' $2.01, not 'get'?
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I think that it was implied that the you in the example is the cashier, who gets $2.01 from a customer.
Why do old people not understand this immediately? Did they learn nothing in school? :)
 
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dann said:
Why do old people not understand this immediately? Did they learn nothing in school? :)
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Interesting thing that. In the 1960s, schools started teaching arithmetic using Cuisenaire Rods. The theory was that students using these rods would not have to learn arithmetic by rote. As a result, a number of students from that time would not be able to do mental arithmetic without a calculator.

Fortunately for me, although the nuns also used Cuisenaire Rods, they were skeptical that they would replace rote learning so they continued to beat arithmetic into me.

After a few years, schools started to realize that Cuisenaire rods were promising more than they could deliver and went back to teaching arithmetic the way they knew best.
 
I messed with those things when I was a kid! Would have been in the 70s I think. Possibly very early 80s. Personally I think a tactile representation of numbers and quantities was valuable, but just so--I think they tried to make more of them than they were.

In the end I was just using them as Legos that wouldn't stick together. I never discovered any way of doing basic arithmetic that worked better for me than the traditional addition and times tables, long division, and so forth. Once in a while my stepdad or a teacher tried to get me to visualize the problems in a different way, like "Ok this is ALMOST 20, so just multiply by twenty and then add the extras back in". But I couldn't work that way--that meant changing my method every time depending on what numbers I got. The only way I could get it right reliably was to do it the same way every time.

Some people can think that way and save time, other people can't.
 
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California did the same thing for "imbalances" with minority arrests. They lowered many crimes from felony to misdemeanor, and raised the monetary amount for a felony as well. All in an effort to make things equal across racial lines.

They don't deny that is the reason so I won't bother looking for a link. I've posted it many times here in the past year.

And I no I do not agree with any of this.
 
psionl0 said:
Interesting thing that. In the 1960s, schools started teaching arithmetic using Cuisenaire Rods.
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I never heard of those. There is no Wikipedia article about them in a Scandinavian language, so I don't think they were ever used here.
I remember slide rules. I hated those things even though there was nothing irrational about them. Fortunately, they didn't survive the arrival of pocket calculators, at least not in schools.
 
dann said:
I never heard of those. There is no Wikipedia article about them in a Scandinavian language, so I don't think they were ever used here.
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Maybe it is an AUSUK thing. ;)

Education departments in Australia tend to be top heavy bureaucracies that are always foisting fads into schools - riding roughshod over the qualms of the teachers who have to try and implement them in the class room. Cuisenaire rods is just one of these ideas.

Don't get me wrong. Tactile devices to help figure out addition and multiplication tables is a good idea but if you are going to do arithmetic without a calculator then sooner or later, you will have to rote memorize these tables.
 
My parents bought a set of Cuisenaire Rods when I was a kid. We did some exercises with them, but nothing ever came of it. I remember their tactile aesthetics were very pleasing. The feel of the resin and the weight of the pieces.
 
Sherkeu said:
I hate that the metric is 'closing the gap' and not actually improving overall achievement for all students. Just imagine all the ways you can 'close that gap' just by closing off measuring mastery in a subject or cutting honors classes that have disparities in representation...etc.... Bad metric.
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Winner winner, chicken dinner!!

We homeschool two boys. Yesterday for one class we studied the district's goals. It's 263 words.

None of these words appeared: "reading, writing, mathematics, science".

It is the equivalent of Hershey's company writing a description of their business objectives without a word about producing chocolate.

Instead, it is three things: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It's pretty clear what that means underneath the obtuse Orwellian jargon. So...

Our local public school enrollment has fallen by 69% while population rose 11% in the 15 years before covid. Wow!

Surprisingly it held steady after covid at our school. Because the parents paying attention had already removed their kids. Adjusted for population, enrollment is down over 70%. It's incredible given that they spent over $33k per student last year.

But we're tied with Mexico in our local school's academic scores. The parents who care about that have removed their kids for a vastly superior academic track. It isn't hard to beat Mexico.

The other parents are trades-oriented and do not see the schools teaching anything useful. A kid that stays with his dad doing heavy equipment work, welding, mechanics, construction, etc. is going to be making adult pay at 12. Mine do at 10 and 11 years old, $100/hour on our bulldozer.

We have done a lot more dumbing down than in mathematics. The kids better fit for trades have been rendered ignorant where they need it most. Forcing them to do math instead of welding, which pays $90k a year here and does not even require an elementary education.

An illiterate boy can be a journeyman welder by 12 and make a million dollars by 21 years old. Instead of making a millionaire out of the welder, we make him do a curriculum he is not cut out for. We lie and say he is Einstein but the systemic something or other is keeping him from doing physics so he must spend a decade failing at that instead of becoming rich.

This is not "equity". We have a perverted, snobbish view of education. There is only one kind of knowledge to them. It will be imposed on everyone in the name of removing "barriers" whether they like it or not. Even if they starve to death, the important thing is they were in an algebra class instead of making good money.
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
Winner winner, chicken....
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A strictly vocational education is not broadly extensible beyond its immediate application and therefore restricts future potential, apart from making it far less likely to allow a child to step very far from the tribal cave and benefit from the full range of human knowledge and history. Why, people like that are likely to confuse nuclear explosions with "big fireballs, like you've never seen before" and support policies leading to deadly fallout, with "my bad" not cutting it afterwards.
Ignorance is bad enough, but willful ignorance an act of abandonment, leaving one's post as a responsible member of society. But hey, with change jingling in your pocket, you can have a beer and enjoy the light show. Besides, the less you know, the more one feels smart, unable to recall the many times naive impression had to give way to an informed opposite, rarely if ever experiencing a major advance in understanding, gosh, anything not strewn around the shop floor.


Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
Winner winner, chicken dinner!!

We homeschool two boys. Yesterday for one class we studied the district's goals. It's 263 words.

None of these words appeared: "reading, writing, mathematics, science".

It is the equivalent of Hershey's company writing a description of their business objectives without a word about producing chocolate.

Instead, it is three things: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It's pretty clear what that means underneath the obtuse Orwellian jargon. So...

Our local public school enrollment has fallen by 69% while population rose 11% in the 15 years before covid. Wow!

Surprisingly it held steady after covid at our school. Because the parents paying attention had already removed their kids. Adjusted for population, enrollment is down over 70%. It's incredible given that they spent over $33k per student last year.

But we're tied with Mexico in our local school's academic scores. The parents who care about that have removed their kids for a vastly superior academic track. It isn't hard to beat Mexico.

The other parents are trades-oriented and do not see the schools teaching anything useful. A kid that stays with his dad doing heavy equipment work, welding, mechanics, construction, etc. is going to be making adult pay at 12. Mine do at 10 and 11 years old, $100/hour on our bulldozer.

We have done a lot more dumbing down than in mathematics. The kids better fit for trades have been rendered ignorant where they need it most. Forcing them to do math instead of welding, which pays $90k a year here and does not even require an elementary education.

An illiterate boy can be a journeyman welder by 12 and make a million dollars by 21 years old. Instead of making a millionaire out of the welder, we make him do a curriculum he is not cut out for. We lie and say he is Einstein but the systemic something or other is keeping him from doing physics so he must spend a decade failing at that instead of becoming rich.

This is not "equity". We have a perverted, snobbish view of education. There is only one kind of knowledge to them. It will be imposed on everyone in the name of removing "barriers" whether they like it or not. Even if they starve to death, the important thing is they were in an algebra class instead of making good money.
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Wow. Arguing for child labor, that's something you don't see every day.

Thankfully we have laws to prevent exploitation like that.

And if you are actually making your underage children work using heavy machinery, you should be prosecuted according to the law.
 
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You don't need an English lit degree to be a machinist but math is absolutely essential.

I am bad at math and it really messed with my ability to take certain jobs.
Argue against underwater basket weaving degrees from Flowerchild U as practical but math, sciences and chemistry are very useful in getting better jobs.

A lot of lazy kids end up dishwashers and wait staff for blowing off the hard stuff in school. I am one.

Yet I can field fabricate repairs to old machines that keep them in service without a lot of precise measurements. Great on a bulldozer but keep me away from spacecraft and airliners.

I learned to respect those that tried harder early in life. Now I have to teach my son by my example how to do better.

Karma.....
 
dirtywick said:
You don’t know anything about trades if you think math is unimportant
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You don't know much about anything if you think math is unimportant.
I am pretry sure a knowledge of math had something to do with Bill Gates becoming one of the world's richest men....


Anyway, ABP's whole Anti Establishment rants became boring a long time ago.
Just another guy who see himself as some sort of Neo fighting against the Matrix...
 
Boudicca90 said:
Wow. Arguing for child labor, that's something you don't see every day.

Thankfully we have laws to prevent exploitation like that.

And if you are actually making your underage children work using heavy machinery, you should be prosecuted according to the law.
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Yeah, 12 seems a little young for heavy machinery.
It's not unusual for some Technical high schools to train high school age kids in the use of heavy machinery as part of an apprentice program, but 12 is way too young.
But anyway, the poster see himself as some kind of heroic Anarchist fighting the MAN, so crap like this is only to be expected.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
... Why, people like that are likely to confuse nuclear explosions with "big fireballs, like you've never seen before" and support policies leading to deadly fallout, with "my bad" not cutting it afterwards. ...
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What's the use of knowledge about nuclear fission? Anybody can do that!
It takes a real stable genius to come up with ideas for the practical use of those big fireballs, like to put out hurricanes, for instance. I bet they would also come in handy in the fight against cancer-spreading windmills ...
 
Shop class is going the same way that everything not on the standardized tests is going. Extraneous programs that build valuable life skills are getting cut by lean budgets. Arts, Music, Shop Class, Home Ec, none of that stuff shows up on the tests and money is tight, so they're first to get the chop. Why is the school gonna buy a bandsaw when they can better spend the time and money pumping their students test scores up a few more points?

These kinds of experiences are valuable and enriching even if they don't lead to future technical careers, but increasingly our society is deciding that students don't deserve them.
 
It is impressive that they have managed to find so many black parents who are willing to stand up against CRT, but these parents don't seem to have no idea what CRT is all about:

I don't know about you, but telling my child or any child that they are in a permanent oppressed status in America because they are black is racist. And saying that white people are automatically above my child or any child is racist as well.
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Those children are not in an "oppressed status in America because they are black". They are in an oppressed status because that's what America is about. And there is nothing automatic about white people being above black people. That is a function of racism, and it isn't racist to point that out.
 
From Canada:


MAT192H1: Liberating Mathematics



Hours
36L


Currently, mathematics is at a crossroads between tradition and progress. Progress has been led in large part by women mathematicians, in particular Black women, Indigenous women, and women from visible minorities. Intertwined in their studies of mathematics is a daring critique of traditional mathematics, re-imagining of mathematics culture, and more. This course will compare and contrast new forms of accessible mathematics with standard sources that draw dominantly on the experiences and narratives of men. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Prerequisite
High school level algebra.

Distribution Requirements
Science


Breadth Requirements
The Physical and Mathematical Universes (5)
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https://artsci.calendar.utoronto.ca/course/mat192h1
 
I guess if somebody wanted to destroy education and ensure rebuild to be very hard, this is not bad way to begin...
 
I am not really in favor of CRT. I do have a fair idea what it is. In my mind its just another form of extremism. I do respect it and am mindful what I say around my work however since I am aware that CRT is a power to be feared in society. In my mind CRT is mostly composed of statements that don't make much sense that you have to not only agree to, you have to answer the right way so you won't get discriminated against by others. I am fairly aware that freedom of speech is dead if it has ever existed. It was killed by extremists on both the left and right wing. On the right wing you are discriminated against if you don't watch one news network or the like.
 
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Bubba said:
In their words, parents tell school boards they believe teaching CRT dumbs their kids down
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Which is kind of weird given that CRT itself is graduate level material.

MinnesotaBrant said:
I am not really in favor of CRT. I do have a fair idea what it is. In my mind its just another form of extremism.
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Are you sure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

Critical race theory (CRT) is a framework of analysis and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.[1][2][3][4] CRT examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the United States.[5][6] A tenet of CRT is that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals.[7][8]
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Ironically one of the main academic complaints about CRT is that it:

Academic critics of CRT argue that CRT elevates storytelling over evidence and reason, rejects the concepts of truth and merit, and opposes liberalism.
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Whether you agree or disagree with CRT it's not being taught in schools nor is it even possible to teach it there. Even undergraduates in university typically would not be able to fully understand it.


What the right wing nutbars are objecting to isn't CRT it's simply that they don't want the actual history of race and racism in America to be taught.
 
lomiller said:
Which is kind of weird given that CRT itself is graduate level material.
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True and misleading at the same time. CRT is not taught in elementary or high school but its principles are clearly guiding decisions of school boards and administrators, many of whom actually have graduate degrees. CRT is clearly the impetus behind California's recent decision to get rid of all advanced math classes in elementary school and the first two years of high school.

The goal here is to reduce the racial gap in math, which sounds laudable, but of course there are two ways to narrow the gap. One is to improve the abilities of the lowest performers. This can be difficult. The other is to lower the abilities of the highest performers. This is comparatively easy and the route that California has chosen. Harrison Bergeron writ large.

Ironically one of the main academic complaints about CRT is that it:
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They are referring to classical liberals there, not left-leaning Americans.

Whether you agree or disagree with CRT it's not being taught in schools nor is it even possible to teach it there. Even undergraduates in university typically would not be able to fully understand it.
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I am sure as a field of study it's much more complicated than I understand, but in general it is not hard to understand Kendi's central premise, which is that racial disparities can be solely attributed to racism, structural or overt, and his prescription that to be anti-racist you must act to eliminate the disparities. The problem is that he has not established his premise, just assumed it.

What the right wing nutbars are objecting to isn't CRT it's simply that they don't want the actual history of race and racism in America to be taught.
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As a card-carrying member of the right wing nutbars, I can tell you that it is easy to tell the actual history of race and racism in America as a positive tale of two great evils (slavery and segregation) that were overcome, largely because they so obviously contradicted the ideals expressed by the founders about things like liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
 
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