Posted on 07/18/2023 9:49:22 AM PDT by massmike
A school district in Massachusetts has been slowly phasing algebra 1 out of its middle-school curriculum because the advanced math classes were predominantly taken by white and Asian students. Now, some area parents are considering placing their child in a private school or a homeschooling program to ensure that they are adequately prepared for high school mathematics.
Since 2017, Cambridge Public Schools has been slowly moving away from placing middle school students into "grade-level" or "accelerated" math classes since the "grade-level" courses were filled with black and Hispanic students, while the "accelerated" courses had mostly white and Asian students. District officials claim that the changes are designed to create better equity.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
I didn’t teach him any of those classes, lol! He took them at a local college while he was in high school.
However, I do have an engineering degree and took all those classes myself in the early eighties. I was in the minority, but I thought differential equations was very easy. And I’m really not some kind of a genius. I think I just had a really good professor or something. I vaguely remember converting the differential equations to algebraic equations and then solving those.
I don’t think I took linear algebra. Was that matrices and determinants? I feel like I encountered those in another course.
A good teacher makes a big difference. I got As in every math course I ever took except for DQ, I got a B in that. Getting B means you have a good memory but haven’t really mastered the subject. Yes “converting the differential equations to algebraic equations and then solving those” is how it is done. And again yes matrices and determinants is a big part of liner algebra. Now mind you I took those 50+ years ago so things (teaching techniques) might have changed and my memory could be iffy.
I posted a reply to this a few days ago and now I don’t see it.
Good job! There’s nothing like looking back at these kids when they become adults and realizing that we did it without sending them to school for a single day. Who would have thought? :-)
Progressives want the U.S. public schools to have the dumbest students of any country in the world.
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