Posted on 04/23/2021 11:24:00 AM PDT by grundle
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
April 23, 2021
In the name of what progressives refer to as “equity,” Virginia is planning to eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade.
On a personal level, as a person who always took the highest level math classes that were available during my entire schooling, and who always scored in the 99th percentile on standardized math tests, I think this is a horrible idea.
On a practical level, as a person who wants bridges that don’t fall down, I think this is a horrible idea.
And on an intellectual level, as a person who knows that Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” was written as a warning, and not an instruction manual, I think this is a horrible idea.
“Harrison Bergeron” was a fictional story that takes place in the future, where the government tries to make everyone equal. So the best ballet dancers were forced to wear weights on their arms and legs so they couldn’t dance better than anyone else. The best looking people were forced to wear masks on their faces. And the smartest people (like those who were the best at math) were forced to wear a noisemaking device inside their ears so they couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than 20 seconds at a time.
Almost 60 years ago I went to public high school in Virginia and took the standard academic courses, which included Algebra 1, Plane Geometry, and Algebra 2 in the first 3 years. Calculus and Solid Geometry were optional in the senior year.
I’m certain that in the interval since my HS graduation that mathematics has continued to play an ever increasingly more important role in most if not all technological progress and to some extent in professional and business success as well. Also, I can attest to the fact that carpenters must be able to understand and accurately apply the Pythagorean theorem in order to put roofs on houses. Plumbers and electricians too must calculate accurately in order that drains flow freely and circuits aren’t over loaded. These are not insignificant matters, and the necessity math skills are only going to continue to advance with time and progress.
For Virginia to deprive public school students from required proficiency in mathematics makes about as much sense as refusing to teach them to read.
Whatever the reasons for this initiative, it’s wrongheaded, plain and simple. Think of it as picking the wings off butterflies.
“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”
― George Orwell, 1984
**************
1...2...3...5...4...6...7
2+2=5
The newest version of the Vandals, and the Visigoths.
Kids will just go to community college. Why no get both high school and college credit at the same time.
Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
What a dumb idea. I took 2 summers before entering High school for math so I could have calculus for my senior year. It was freshman college calculus. I was a great help as I majored in Chemistry.
How do we KNOW that 2+2=4? Take 2 balls and put them in a box. Add 2 more balls. Count the number of balls in the box. It ain’t rocket science and any adult who gets different answer is mentally defective.
...because the story was about 10th grade students.
I don’t think we want then bailing out of school at 15.
Will Virginia require the best football players to practice each session with the worst players, so no one is marginalized? Nooooooo. Football is, like, important.
I don’t think I have ever used any math beyond 8th grade math in my life time. these days there are apps for more complicated calculations.
however, the ability to think logically is crucial to the maintenance of a self governing people.
The left destroys everything it comes in contact with. Math included.
Why do blacks and Hispanics care about courses they don’t take?
That’s no surprise.
Virginia latest state to legalize marijuana after Gov. Northam signs new law: Virginia legal marijuana law will go into effect on July 1
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3953223/posts
These idiots that are pushing the “equity” thing instead of “equality” must believe that they will achieve that by forcing everyone to the lowest possible level in every discipline.
I suppose that will open the door to bring in immigrants to do the jobs that Americans CAN’T do.
Who were the Goths and Vandals?
SARAH PRUITT
The Goths and the Vandals were two of the Germanic groups that clashed with the Roman Empire throughout Europe and North Africa from the third to the fifth centuries A.D. Because nearly all of the surviving information about the Goths and Vandals comes from Roman sources, history has taken a largely negative view of these groups as brutish and uncivilized “barbarians” who helped bring down Rome’s great empire in Europe. Today, to “vandalize” someone else’s property means to cause damage or destruction, while “Goth” is applied to a subculture known for its dark, gloomy aesthetic. But while both the Goths and the Vandals sacked and plundered Rome (in 410 and 455 A.D., respectively), neither group left the great city in ruins or massacred its inhabitants. In fact, the Goth kingdoms founded in Gaul (modern-day France), Iberia (modern-day Spain) and Italy would adopt Catholic Christianity and other aspects of Roman culture, helping to preserve those traditions long after the Western Empire’s decline and fall.
Little is known about the origins of the Goths before the Romans encountered them; they may have come from Scandinavia, according to some sources, or from modern-day Poland. From the first Gothic invasion of Roman territory in 238, tensions ran high between the Romans and the warrior people they viewed as inferior and even subhuman. Still, many Goths served as Roman soldiers, adapting the Roman life, and the two groups traded with each other. Around 375, a new group known as the Huns appeared north of the Danube and began pushing other groups–including both the Goths and Vandals–further into Roman territory. Tensions between Goths and Romans exploded early in the fifth century, when Goth leader Alaric laid siege to Rome and sacked the city in 410. Alaric’s descendants, known as the Visigoths (western Goths), settled in Gaul and Iberia; the last Visigoth kingdom, in Spain, fell to the Moors in 711. In Italy, the Ostrogoths (eastern Goths) established dominance by the end of the fifth century, but would fall to the Byzantine Empire within a few decades.
Like the Goths, the Vandals may have originated in Scandinavia before migrating south. They first breached the Roman frontier in 406, with the Roman Empire distracted by internal divisions, and began clashing with both Visigoths and Romans in Gaul and Iberia. Under the fierce warrior king Genseric, the Vandals took advantage of Roman weakness in North Africa and established their kingdom there, with its capital at Carthage, by 440. With Genseric’s forces marching on Rome in 455, the desperate Romans sent Pope Leo I to plead for mercy; in exchange for free entry, the Vandals agreed not to burn the city or massacre its citizens. After Genseric died in 477–still undefeated on the battlefield–his empire would decline amid squabbling by his descendants. Byzantine force invaded in 534 and took the last Vandal king, Gelimer, captive in Constantinople.
Watch BARBARIANS RISING Mondays at 9/8c on HISTORY.
TAGSFALL OF ROMEBARBARIANS
BY SARAH PRUITT
Sarah Pruitt is a writer and editor based in seacoast New Hampshire. She has been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005, and is the author of Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of history’s most famous disappearances.
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Those meritocratic classes are exposing inconvenient truths.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
― George Orwell, 1984
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― George Orwell, 1984
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