There are now, not so much 40 years ago. Even today, a lot of the STEM enrichment programs in the US have roots in the USSR. Hell, a big fraction of the physics problems I assign when tutoring these days were written by Russians in the 80s, because they're just that good.
That's the opposite of what I've seen in California. There used to be a big focus on tracking, gifted programs and "accelerated math", but it is now perceived as inequitable. Gifted programs were cancelled, tracks eliminated, and accelerated math discouraged (you can skip a year if you study outside school, but it is discouraged). The focus is getting everyone to some minimal level, and no attention on the high performers.
It’s not just California. The combination of “no child left behind” legislation, combined with modern political movements (CRT/I in particular), has rendered large swaths of American public education devoted to bringing everyone up to a minimum standard (not necessarily a bad thing in itself, mind you), but all the while sacrificing the potential of gifted students by not placing everyone into separate (and significantly varying) tracks according to their varying abilities.
In addition, schools are funded based on standardized test scores, which encourages many schools, especially in poorer areas, to teach to the tests—instead of teaching students to think.
By CRT are you referring to Critical Race Theory? I'm sceptical that its both that influential, or that any good faith reading of CRT supports sacrificing accelerated programs. In particular CRT in education if anything pushes against reliance on standardized testing scores.
Yes, that’s what I meant (and I for intersectionality). Agreed that CRT/I would oppose standardized tests, but that’s only because CRT/I at its core opposes anything objective. And the philosophy of CRT/I has already made significant inroads in American culture.
Witness all the accelerated programs that have been shut down, the many recent attacks on objective standards—all in the name of “equity” (which does not mean equality of value, treatment, or opportunity—it means creating equal outcomes by whatever means is available —consider the implications carefully).
Universities are being forced to grapple with these ideas, with the core question being “does our university still value the pursuit of truth, critical thinking, and free inquiry above all else, or will we acknowledge that ‘people from oppressed classes have a truth unto themselves that cannot be taught but must be respected, and all opposing viewpoints must be shut down’?”
If this movement hasn’t yet affected you, it will soon. It’s ripping apart social groups all over the place.
(I can give examples of all I’ve described in the morning if you’re interested. I’m just tapping this out before bed.)
As someone that has been spending a lot of time around Higher Education over the past 7 years or so, I personally cannot think of a single University I have interacted that isn't making many of their decisions under the influence of the ideas described above.
In the UK at least, the way I read the situation is that most of the Russell Group pays their bills off the fees they can charge international students - and compared to the income this gets us from China, other countries are a rounding error.
The problem is, these students are not coming here to learn how we're all equal, they're paying for a degree that proves they're very much not equal to about a billion people back home (compare the median wage in China with the cost of a one-year MSc in the UK for example).
That's also why most of our Covid-19 planning is around how do we deal with the income loss if 50% fewer international students enrol next year, the options seem to be government bailout or bust.
So there may be an unspoken rule in some places that you don't criticise the latest theories on diversity, but there's an even more unspoken rule that you don't publicly apply them to the situation in Tibet or Urumqi.
It will be extremely interesting to see how these two pressures interact over the coming decade.
Johnathan Haidt has some good talks on youtube about this sort of stuff. I think he mentioned Chicago University being one that is pushing for "truth" over "social justice".
Sorry these are coming a whole day later. Here we go:
New York City has (or had?) an active effort in place to cancel/dismantle "gifted" programs in primary and secondary education. Here's the PDF released by their committed last August: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/1c478c_f14e1d13df45444c883bbf... . There are lots of other examples of this phenomenon around the country... I doubt I need to come up with more examples now.
Here's a good introduction to many of the practical, everyday consequences of CRT/I's influence in American culture. It's an interview with Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay (this is part 1, and I think there are 3 or 4 parts in total): https://youtu.be/YDFL3xwEEG8
-- that last one in particular, if you watch the whole thing, is chock full of great examples.
Hope that's helpful. That's all I was able to find in the time I had.
The thing is, if you accept the basic "liberal arts" idea of education that it's about creating a common culture, then a lot of the ideas coming from the social justice side of things actually make some sense. From the "liberal" point of view, one of the purposes of English lit class and education in general is to create a common background that people in professional settings can use in conversation - I can use my favourite Shakespearean metaphor to argue a point and I know that you, as an educated colleague, will understand what I mean. I could talk about CRT/I and say "something wicked this way comes" if I wanted to, and you could hopefully decode that. Otherwise I'd have the Herculean task of having to keep a database of which of my colleagues understand which kinds of analogies, or reduce all my communication to the lowest common denominator. For example, I'm assuming here that the expressions "Herculean" and "lowest common denominator" (as a figure of speech) mean something to readers on HN.
If you accept this point of view - and lots of educators past and present have done so, including white male ones - then the student slogan "Why is my curriculum white?" makes sense. Would a stock of common background knowledge (for want of a better word) be that much less effective if it included slightly less Hemingway and Twain and slightly more contributions from more diverse authors? So the argument goes, if (to simplofy a lot) white kids learn about white culture at home and black kids learn about black culture, but the test to get a good job includes the "culture fit" part of can we hold a conversation based on the kinds of analogies and forms of speech you learn at college, then it's (1) unfair if the thing you learn at college just happens to be "white culture" and (2) even more so if a more diverse college education would serve _exactly the same purpose_.
The million dollar question is whether (2) is true. I personally think it mostly is for "arts", mainly because there are different cultures with different languages even within "the west" and several of them seem to work about equally well.
But here's the rub: science doesn't work like that.
There's a philosophical argument that Twain _created_ Huck Finn, but Newton only _discovered_ the laws of motion - if Twain hadn't lived then we might have equally good literature, but it would not be the same. But if Newton hadn't lived, someone else would have discovered F=ma and the like by now, and the formula would be exactly the same.
My main worry is that if the US tries to turn science/tech into liberal arts and China doesn't, then we're creating a new kind of inequality: in a generation or two they will wipe the floor with us. But I'm happy to listen to any argument from the SJ/CRT/I side that doesn't imply us handing over our place in the world to a power who very much believes that all races are not equal.
SJ/CRT movement is devouring itself. The more and more it will affect sciences, technology and other critical economic areas, the more US economy will suffer. That will mean US will be less capable on exporting those ideologies into other countries.
Meanwhile, countries which no such handicap will rise economically and be able to export more of their own ideologies.
> Would a stock of common background knowledge (for want of a better word) be that much less effective if it included slightly less Hemingway and Twain and slightly more contributions from more diverse authors?
In practice it hasn’t worked out that way.
Instead it has:
1) Created a cultural barrier between the average Joe and the “liberal elite”.
It turns out that Twain etc are approachable to the average high school diploma American in a way the replacements texts are not.
2) Created a clear divide between minorities who study at elite US universities and the rest of us.
For example there is a level of alienation between Chinese tech workers who went to college in the US vs other Chinese tech workers here.
3) Created a group of “liberal elite” who think they can speak on behalf of, and even lead, other cultural groups when what they have learned isn’t representative of those cultures at all.
Its hard to take these assertions seriously while they are so vague, especially as they seem to be respins of the idea that education, and higher education in particular, is taking liberalism/anti-racism/feminism "too far".
My understanding is that you're saying there is a causal link between admission programs being shutdown and CRT/I, and that the particular aspect of CRT/I that causes this is an insistence on equal outcomes across social groups. I'd be interested to first establish what the actual statistics are wrt gifted and talented student programs - are the closing faster than they opening? Are they shrinking or expanding? Where approaches have changed, are the outcomes definitely worse? etc.
Does this mean we are discounting material possibilities, such as just not having enough money or changing demands/restrictions on expenditure? Accelerated programs sound a lot like arts programs - easy to cut with minimal blowback. Are we also discounting that providing fair access to accelerated programs turned out to be far more complicated than we originally thought and that the choice has been to cut rather than spend money on extra tests and more qualified staff? CRT/I [aren't the only academic source](https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/02783190609554382) of critique these programs receive.
I'd also contest your definition of equity in CRT/I as an overriding principle ('equality of outcomes by whatever means available' and implicitly, regardless of the consequences). CRT/I uses the principle of equity - that outcomes should be proportionate across social groups and that unequal outcomes must be accounted for. The vast majority of CRT/I scholarship explicitly focuses on 'leveling-up' outcomes, and where this focus is not explicit it is normally implicit (in that the paper would not otherwise make much sense, or the prospect of reducing everyone's outcomes to the lowest common denominator is a rhetorical tool).
‘people from oppressed classes have a truth unto themselves that cannot be taught but must be respected, and all opposing viewpoints must be shut down’: This is a misreading of CRT/I, and one that I suggest highlights its value. CRT/I asserts that everybody has a point of view and way of seeing the world that is affected by their various interlocking identities and experience. There are plenty of aspects of life were we generally accept the necessity and uniqueness of experience as a kind of knowledge - jobs, parenting, relationships, etc. Why should race, gender or class be different? However I'd argue that this assertion gets us closer to the truth. Accounting for bias in science and acknowledging how fundamental it is to people and instruments gets us better science, not worse, even if its harder. "all opposing viewpoints must be shutdown", seems to be a strawman: No reading of CRT/I demands this, in fact most of the literature consists of patient, often quantitative, critiques of systems (law, education, science, public health, etc). So if anything, CRT/I furthers the ideals you see it as threatening.
CRT is postmodernism, witch is basically what depressed Communists came up with to continue to hope they get communism. The amount of inroads stuff like this has made, specially in universities is beyond sad.
Wow. By that argument, one could just as easily label top universities with high scholastic admissions requirements to be “inequitable”, and thus unacceptable.
Equal opportunity does not imply equal outcome—even for a perfectly fair school. Quite the opposite! In fact, I’m glad I got rejected from several schools... their high bar helped guide me to something that worked better for me anyway.
I think people do say that. The notion is that when you look at the people attending Harvard and Mit, for instance, their parents tend to be much more wealthy than the students at Bunker Hill Community College. You're right! That isn't an excuse to shut them down but it might be a reason to think of the system a inequitable. It may be that similar parallels exist in K-12. Then if you're middle class or poor, you have to wonder, "Why am I paying taxes for an elite school that my kid likely won't attend? Can't the rich kids' parents pay for the elite school themselves?" That may be short term thinking or kind of defeatist but it is reasonable.
> That may be short term thinking or kind of defeatist but it is reasonable.
I think this is exactly the wrong thinking about taxes. And it's abused by pundits and politicians by making people spend the same money many times in their head. I mean, you can't be simultaneously outraged that "your tax money" supports elite schools and abortion clinics and the military; you don't pay that much of a tax. In fact, an average taxpayer's contribution would amount to buying some office supplies for one, small government building.
Money is fungible, and by the time enough is collected to fund a school, there's no "my money" in there anymore, much like if you take a fistful of sand from your yard and throw it on a beach nearby, there is no more "your sand".
People who believe in this nonsense are essentially communists. The people who came up with it, clearly were and they were quite explicite about this.
They don't want equal opportunity, they reject that something like that even exists as opportunity is always unequal. Only transformation of society to communism in the end will 'solve' those problems.
So yes, in their opinion all of this stuff is evil and bad and should be replaced with ... something better. Of course they couldn't really tell you how that would look like.
These programs exist, but are generally separated from the ordinary high school system. For example, right here in the Bay area there's Proof School, a private school founded precisely "for kids who love math", AoPS Academy, for extracurricular challenging math classes, and powerhouse public schools like Lynbrook, where gigantic student-run clubs aimed at competitions provide exactly this kind of education.
Comparing the Bay to the American education system as a whole is unfair. In the more rural part of California I grew up we had no options available to us at all. There was the high school, and the more trade-focused high school that only existed as somewhere to put kids who had been expelled from the normal high school.
People do that with Soviet system too. In the 1980s, a disproportionate number of top scientific cadre were born and raised in Moscow and went through the few focused schools there.
Born gifted in Govneevka, Kirov obl., pop. 20,000? Good luck.
The system was absolutely flawed, still is, but still good enough to encourage the highly skilled.
Our (Romania's) education system was (is) the same, if you were GOOD at something there were plenty of paths that teachers would generally push you towards, special clubs for maths, languages, art (less common). Or schools who would try to group together highly skilled students.
System (after communism) has the same flaw, most rural areas have worse access to education, or better said, much worse quality of education.
Yup, when I went through school the gifted program was cancelled at around the same time as the recession and never brought back, and students would skip a year or two in math. Now trying to skip two is much, much harder.
> There used to be a big focus on tracking, gifted programs and "accelerated math", but it is now perceived as inequitable.
That is exactly right. The other people commenting to the contrary don't seem to know what they're talking about. Even in public schools it was common across the US until the late 1990s to have separate programs and classes (almost always referred to as "gifted" in some regard) for superior students. It wasn't viewed as unfair either, it was common and it was a point of pride to be in those classes, to be selected as a higher tier student.
Something changed in the last 20 years where treating students differently became considered unfair. The everybody gets a trophy syndrome took over.
He wanted poorer, minority kids to have a chance at a good education and high standards as well? Wasn't very shocking, though the title was incendiary.
I transcribed the clip, and I don't see where he's "dragging people down". My guess is that you're reacting to "as a white male in society I'm given a lot of privilege that I didn't earn" and "I think it's really important those kids learn how to read just as well as I had the opportunity to learn how to read." It sounds to me exactly like he's trying to "elevate people", but you're reading it as "drag people down". Why? This is confusing to me.
First person) Every teacher who's using it basically is saying this is inspiring a closer and more engaged student body. So the people that are actually using it like it. And again in terms of the local control, you still have local control. So if you want higher standards, if that's really, if that is your genuine point, then you can go ahead and do it. You can do the higher standard. And the process was indeed totally transparent. And when [garbled] we'll move on to David and Bill.
Second person) Um, I'm not paid to be here either. I'm just an interested teacher who helped write the standards. And the reason why I helped write the standards and the reason why I am here today is that as a white male in society I'm given a lot of privilege that I didn't earn. And as a result ... [scattered boos from the audience] ... I think it's really important that all kids have an equal opportunity to learn how to read. I think I had a set of advantages as a result of who I was, not ???. And when I walk into places like Roberto Clemente high school on ??? side of Chicago, I think it's really important those kids learn how to read just as well as I had the opportunity to learn how to read. And ??? created an equitable education opportunity for all kids. I think this is actually the greatest lesson we can teach our kids.
I don’t see the issue. The internet exists now and you can access a world of content in seconds. I didn’t get any of this, ever in my mediocre education - I don’t see why so much focus should be placed on these elites at the expense of everyone else.
> I don’t see why so much focus should be placed on these elites at the expense of everyone else.
Because the big breakthroughs and innovations in math and science are achieved by the elites and not by the mediocre masses.
This doesn't mean that we should neglect the mediocre masses (I'm one of them, by the way), they do good, important work. But they're are not sufficient.
The term "elites" in this thread does not refer to the aristocracy or the financial 0.1%. It refers to the high-achievers in math and science, and they have to work for their income just like everybody else (and from what I've ready about postgrads and PhD students in the US, they have to work their asses off).
Sounds like hagiography to me. There were lots of ordinary, non-prodigies that built ARPANet, TCP/IP, the Unix/Windows network stack and HTTP. Plenty work at companies that build the network planes, like Cisco and AWS and Microsoft.
Policies can't be decided based on your insecurities. You don't want anyone to be better perceived than you even when they may be objectively better. All your elitism comments say the same thing.
For one your comprehension. I said may. Give me a case by case study and I can give my opinion. Are you saying all software engineers are equal or you are better than everyone out there ? If not why don't the better ones deserve more pay / prestige etc.
I don't know you or your work. I have no qualms in saying most likely there is someone better than you. I have no qualms in saying that about 99% of the people I know because it's statistically true. To say that others don't deserve more pay or prestige is akin to saying "I will feel bad so don't pay someone better more".
40 years ago is 1980, so that seems consistent with his comment. Also consistent is that Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, which has been ranked #1 and is generally in the top ten US high schools, was founded in 1985.
