A positive change for sure but what about the kids who were stunted developmentally during that time?
In a nearby elementary school they are now touting teaching kids “AI literacy”. At an age where they don’t even have enough of a world view to understand anything related to it. Such an asinine idea, and of course it will be at the expense of something non-trendy.
It seems like public education suffers from so much “idea cascade” now and jumps from one fad to the next. Educational paths are more and more left to chance than organized thought.
A friend of a friend has been in a rough patch with her spouse and has been discussing it all with ChatGPT. So far ChatGPT has pretty much enthusiastically encouraged divorce, which seems like it will happen soon. I don't think either side is innocent but to end a relationship over probabilistic token prediction with some niceties throw in is something else.
I am not sure why so many people are against mathematics in school. Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees. I would think they would realize the importance of math.
This trend is really upsetting. My daughter is a baby but i am already looking into math circles and alternative mathematics curriculums since us math education was bad before this trend of gutting mathematics education.
> Cambridge is full of harvard, mit, bio and tech employees
Are their kids in public school? In some areas, the rich and educated have completed separated from public education, which leaves poor, overworked parents prey to well-meaning but clueless activists.
In public schools the only way to "vote with your wallet" is to relocate, the next best option which is less disruptive to a family is to opt out of the school system if the means are available.
Nearly every big city public school system in the country has moved to a model where you can choose which school your child attends in the system. With all kinds of magnet and charter options. Those schools are judged and rewarded based on their popularity. This was done largely to address your concern.
It has all sorts of other negatives associated with it but lack of choice in curriculum and staffing isn’t one of them.
I'm in a big city and that is certainly not the case. I can submit preferred locations but ultimately there is a very opaque selection process and there is no guarantee made other than a seat somewhere in the system. I know some families who were on a waiting list for years to go to a school in their neighborhood (less than a half mile walking) and were only able to get in this year because of seats opening up due to city exodus.
EDIT - to add, what does this solve in the Cambridge, MA situation where the entire district has removed advanced Algebra?
There are plenty of countries that you get algebra in elementary school. Saying it's only middle school is overly dismisive to the massive amounts of damage to mathematical education in the country this policy is doing.
It can't be doing "massive damage" to mathematical education, because it has simply never been the case that significant numbers of students have ever taken advanced algebra in 8th grade.
> there is nothing well meaning about not teaching maths to children
It's stupid. And there is definitely corruption [1]. (Surprise, surprise, it's another Stanford researcher.) But I don't think most activists are going in to hurt children. They mean well, but wind up causing more harm than good.
These are complex systems, even my best efforts at things I have specialist knowledge of can overlook something stupid, there is no intent there.
However, if when peer reviewed and faced with the obviousness of said stupidity one choses to double down that this is the one true way, and proclaim Many of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make then the intention becomes all to clear.
If everyone had good intentions, we would cherry pick the good things from all the rival plans and might just find a magical middle ground that balanced many of the issues and resulted in a better outcome for all.
Probably a case of sociopaths going to sociopath. They don't really care about children or the damage they are doing. They just want to make the right sounding mouth-noises to advance and playing Handicapper General in the name of equality. We saw same sort of vile behavior before with "anti-sex trafficking". We really ought to be throwing these people into woodchippers instead of into power.
The US federal budget deficit for the month of June was $228 billion. Money is being spent and the money printer is running no problem. The administration clearly does not view this as an important issue.
It's tempting to consider "the administration" or "the government" as a single entity that you can reason about like it was an individual.
More likely, there is a bit of focused lobbying being done to suborn the few decisionmakers involved with this, so that a company that contracts firefighting services to the government can grow their contract.
I don't know exactly how it works in California. I know there is a "California Conservation Camp" program that pays inmates $2.90 to $5.12 per day while in the camps, and $1.4 per hour fighting fires, but I don't know if they work with only state prisons or if private prisons get in on that too.
Maybe the cost savings there are enough to drive this dynamic.
People just want simple answers to complex problems, or in this case, purposely obtuse government workings. Not saying we don't have members in congress with good intentions, but they aren't in the positions of weighted power, often times they find themselves snuffed out or forced to fall in line.
The recent railroad strike fiasco was a perfect example of how things are really ran.
If there are “externalities” brought upon the state due to separations, ie strain on public services (crime, welfare programs, school, healthcare, etc) doesn’t the state have an incentive to do so?
Somewhat tangential but an acquaintance at a Fortune-500 level company mentioned to me they are converting tons of currently salaried employees to hourly. These are white collar desk jobs at corporate HQ. I have to infer theres some sort of cost-cutting (wage theft?) motive behind this. Are these types of tactics becoming more prevalent in the white collar world?
Yep, how about a nice zero-hours contact coupled to a non-compete clause. Bring your own stool so you can sit in the lobby and wait to see if you'll be making any money today.
Agree - any propagandist paying attention the last couple of years is acutely aware of the contemporary efficacy of labeling "Science" as a manipulative stiumuls. Run a few biased "analyses", pay for placement in a journal and/or get promoted in a few clickbait news rings, syndication through social media...inception into the minds of millions with relative ease.
In a nearby elementary school they are now touting teaching kids “AI literacy”. At an age where they don’t even have enough of a world view to understand anything related to it. Such an asinine idea, and of course it will be at the expense of something non-trendy.
It seems like public education suffers from so much “idea cascade” now and jumps from one fad to the next. Educational paths are more and more left to chance than organized thought.