Dimwit Math Agenda

 There's a piece off Reason.com which I would encourage people to read.  The topic?  The state of California is working on a program for K-12 students....to be harnessed and limited on math advancement.  In simple terms....if you had 25 kids out of a hundred who had pretty good math skills by the end of the 3rd grade.....you'd typically see them by the sixth grade....getting into more competitive math classes and prepare them for college.  Under this California agenda....you'd try hard to hold everyone back and try to invent a equal system where no one really advances.

Crap?  More or less.

You'd end up with gifted kids sitting there in the 8th or 9th grade....more than capable of handling Algebra and geometry.  Then you just keep leading them in a circle....never advancing....never getting more insight on math problems.  

The reality of this landscape....for the past hundred years?  I would suggest that a quarter of all kids are very capable of taking on intense math, science and reasoning situations by age thirteen.  I'd also suggest that maybe a quarter of all kids are dismally prepared for anything of a challenge at age thirteen....suggesting that they marginally read at the 6th grade level, and are already working hard to be a burger-flipper at age thirteen.

If I were a parent in this mess?  I'd either remove the kid entirely from the school (home-schooling or private school) or I'd have the kid signed up to a program (three afternoons a week) where they leave the school and get 60 minutes of advanced math each afternoon.  By the 11th grade, I'd advance it to five afternoons a week.

As for this being accepted?  Well....ask yourself....if math is such a problem...wouldn't science become a problem, then history/geography, and finally grammar/literature?  Why bother running schools beyond the 9th grade then?  Just graduate them and get to the burger-flipper job as quickly as possible.  

In fact, I might even ask myself....why bother hiring up teachers with bachelor degrees.....I can run these programs with people who have one year of community college and just slant everything to get a burger-flipper kid out into the real world as quick as possible.