Our HS stats class was also retard math
politics
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
But actual stats is SUPER useful
And one of the only places you get to learn a lot of math that's more broadly useful
My radical way to fix education is to not just make it daycare like it is now
So much of K-6 rn is just wasted time, and a glorified public daycare system
That fails at education, habit building, life skills, nutrition/physical activity... Honestly everything
15% of people want to learn
70% of people can be compelled to learn
15% of people should be removed
Put the gifted kids on a special track, but socialize them with the 70% as well
And genuinely, create a pre-prison system for the bottom 15%
This isn't a Black thing, memes aside
There is a population in every school who do not want to engage with it, and are a detriment to the entire system
This includes low-functioning special needs
Create a separate system for them, but there is no saving them
Packaging them in with the normal kids makes your metrics look better
But in absolutes, the same number of people are going to wash out
Agreed, but there's no value having them in the normal education system
I do not think there is value in dragging down everyone in the hopes of reforming serial truants, violent instigators, and other non-participants
I don't mean to literally give up on them from day 1
If people don't know this, it's common for schools to allow K-6 teachers to draft kids for their classes each yeah
To try to avoid too many of the bottom 15% being one person's problem
Yeah, you're not getting the drugs in honours thankfully
Most teachers can peg those ratios from super early on too, where kids will fall
Parental involvement is also the biggest measure of how they turn out
If you get natural reinforcement of critical thinking and learning opportunities outside of state-run daycare, you turn out really well
You don't need gold star parents, just ones who know to encourage good habits and development
Yep, and the longer the school system is a failure, the more parents will write it off as well
Also includes schools offloading too much to parents
They rightfully get frustrated when a kid comes home with a mountain of homework they have to essentially re-teach
Replying to Spooky Phijkchu #spooky.131 They rightfully get frustrated when a kid comes home with a mountain of homework they have to essentially re-teach
What do you mean? We don't give homework anymore :)
lol.... I hate that catching on
Same with fully virtual lesson plans
There's a balance that's not that hard to strike
I'd have lost it
Not reading the rest of the discussion, but math basically can be broken into two camps, computation heavy and proof heavy
proof heavy stuff I would caution about teaching students earlier, they need more mathematical maturity to do
computations for calc stuff, easily can be done by grade 6, maybe earlier if you set up the fundamentals correctly before that
Mathematical maturity, you can have that at 12
but usually you gain that through years of practice and gaining intuition
I think it is fundamentally hard to teach math optimally. What is being done is not working, but part of the issue is the people teaching early math are not math people
you end up with teachers with english degrees who themselves hate math teaching math to 1-6th graders
if someone who does not understand why math is cool is teaching math, the students pick up on that and hate it more
You don't even need to explain when it will show up, but that does help
You literally just need someone who likes math and understands the bigger picture teaching it
Math is inherently fun if you structure it that way (it is essentially just a puzzle)
no school does that because 95+% of teachers are not from a math background at an elementary level
And by the time it is highschool where you will have people with a math background, kids who otherwise might have liked math have been selected out of it by poor early education
This is more a funding issue though, since if you had a dedicated math guy teaching math at elementary schools, I bet you math results would go up
(or math guys)
I have been thinking vaguely about how math education works lately, because of teaching during my TA work
Not exactly the same as this because I am dealing with math majors in their 3rd/4th year of a university math program, but still, I really do think you can systematically fix a lot of issues by just having the right people teaching the material
When half of what spooky said about the 15% applies to yourself, and yet you have a bachelors degree.