"Everyone is mathematically smart as a result of living in the world."
This quote resonates. The problem is that some kids have "lived" more than others. I work in a very economically diverse schools, and one immediate example I can think of is when I use estimation 180 for students to estimate the distance between cities on a map. The students whose families have been on long trips or travelled more have estimates are much more accurate. These lived experiences extend to all sorts of problems and tasks that we use in the classroom. I'll be ruminating on this quote for a while. For more food for thought, read "The Knowledge Gap" by Natalie Wexler through the lens of a math teacher.
Whoa, what a ride. I found the first 2 thirds really challenging, but the last third helped me better understand my agitation. Gut response to all of the research was “but these things matter even if they are not drastically re-ordering the student group outcomes!!!”, which he got to in that last third.
I REALLY struggled with the stuff on the variability of student ability for lots of reasons (mostly considering what this idea has historically led to in education), but he pushed my thinking with his contention that stratification is mainly a problem because it is a determinant of who has access to a life of dignity. Found the predictive stuff in the essay most depressing because if you’re working in settings where you can see the gaps clearly, you will eventually start to come to these conclusions on your own and they are hard realities to work under. Like, this part is a gut punch for the hope-seeking crowd:
“Dramatically moving students around in the quantitative performance spectrum cannot be achieved. It has never been achieved.”
But the prospect of decoupling (or weakening the connection between) school success and positive life outcomes is actually a really radical and hopeful idea. I let out a huge sigh of relief at this part:
“Does that mean that the conditions under which our children learned didn’t matter? Of course not. It mattered because students and teachers are human beings and we should strive to make their lives at school more comfortable, fulfilling, and safe. […] A more humane social contract with greater redistribution and a schooling system that prizes humanistic values rather than quantitative metrics and which helps students who are not academically inclined to find a career niche can all be achieved.”
Wish there was more of this in the essay, but I get why so much time and effort needed to be expended challenging the school fixes. We can’t get to the reimagining and restructuring if we are still sold on the band-aids. Again, what a ride.
"Everyone is mathematically smart as a result of living in the world."
This quote resonates. The problem is that some kids have "lived" more than others. I work in a very economically diverse schools, and one immediate example I can think of is when I use estimation 180 for students to estimate the distance between cities on a map. The students whose families have been on long trips or travelled more have estimates are much more accurate. These lived experiences extend to all sorts of problems and tasks that we use in the classroom. I'll be ruminating on this quote for a while. For more food for thought, read "The Knowledge Gap" by Natalie Wexler through the lens of a math teacher.
Re: Education Doesn’t Work
Whoa, what a ride. I found the first 2 thirds really challenging, but the last third helped me better understand my agitation. Gut response to all of the research was “but these things matter even if they are not drastically re-ordering the student group outcomes!!!”, which he got to in that last third.
I REALLY struggled with the stuff on the variability of student ability for lots of reasons (mostly considering what this idea has historically led to in education), but he pushed my thinking with his contention that stratification is mainly a problem because it is a determinant of who has access to a life of dignity. Found the predictive stuff in the essay most depressing because if you’re working in settings where you can see the gaps clearly, you will eventually start to come to these conclusions on your own and they are hard realities to work under. Like, this part is a gut punch for the hope-seeking crowd:
“Dramatically moving students around in the quantitative performance spectrum cannot be achieved. It has never been achieved.”
But the prospect of decoupling (or weakening the connection between) school success and positive life outcomes is actually a really radical and hopeful idea. I let out a huge sigh of relief at this part:
“Does that mean that the conditions under which our children learned didn’t matter? Of course not. It mattered because students and teachers are human beings and we should strive to make their lives at school more comfortable, fulfilling, and safe. […] A more humane social contract with greater redistribution and a schooling system that prizes humanistic values rather than quantitative metrics and which helps students who are not academically inclined to find a career niche can all be achieved.”
Wish there was more of this in the essay, but I get why so much time and effort needed to be expended challenging the school fixes. We can’t get to the reimagining and restructuring if we are still sold on the band-aids. Again, what a ride.