If you're going to advertise on someone else's substack, you ought to provide a free look, particularly if you're not one of his subscribers. Steve usually hikes up his kilt and shows some leg.
But they saw an opportunity to discriminate against white and yellow people, and they took it. They were willing to accept the consequences, for a while.
I don't think they realized their few elite schools had already vacuumed up all the brainy and prepared URMs before DEI took off, so when they began snatching them from the second tier post Floyd, they ended up with some 3rd tier students.
I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that Harvard didn't handle this better.
When they (and so many other universities) went test-optional, I figured Harvard's admissions office would have the skills and wherewithal to sort out the desired mix of DIE admits, Hollywood scions, legacies, and rich people kids, plus just enough genuinely smart kids to keep up their academic reputation. The real smarties, even without test scores, would still signal their potential through authentic academic competitions and other high-profile accomplishments.
But it seems it didn't work out. Maybe the admissions team got way too greedy with the DIE jihad, and just couldn't bear to limit their numbers to a reasonable (i.e. hide-able) level.
They seem like true believers to me. They really believed racism was holding these kids back and they would correct it through their moral superiority. In 2020 I doubt anyone on staff could have pushed back without getting fired.
It's not being true believers. If you suppress information about intelligence and heredity, no-one will know. Same as if you suppress reading, no-one will know how to read. This is exactly how human societies work, and also how they fail. It's not for nothing that the Russians 30 years after they abandoned communism have become a reasonable fighting force again.
We only know because we use clandestine, verboten information channels.
I meanSteve Sailer was cancelled like almost 20 odd years, right? He's been only put out of the freezer post-COVID, BLM, Ukraine and Gaza, because the big-tech formed the view that the woke islamo-gauchist coalition currently ruling the West is leading to its demise
It's a mistake to assume that the admissions office is the same cynical organization it was in the 1980s. It's surprisingly easy to lose institutional memory.
I think Steve argued this on his old blog. Back in the 80s people still remembered how things really worked, but after a few decades, since they couldn't admit the truth or someone might squeal, the knowledge was no longer passed down and the people actually believed the lies they were feeding everyone.
This is how human societies work all the time. In the middle ages the elite people were telling all the other people (A) someone was poisoning the wells, or (B) witches existed. So the whole society went on the rampage for either A or B.
"Harvard engages in insider trading to make this all _sustainable_."
Reminds me of an anecdote:
I was recently at a meeting with the Chairman of the Board of a prominent charity. The meeting was about something else. That he was Chairman of this charity came up only incidentally. Being more of a businessman than charity-man, he couldn't resist a bit of bragging about how well the charity's endowment was doing, which I suppose reflected well on him as Chairman. Then he started complaining about how the Federal DOGE cuts had reduced some of the charity's research grants.
As I say, we had other business, but I wanted to say, "Didn't you just mention you have a big endowment? You could always pay for YOUR research with YOUR endowment. I mean, that's what it's for."
My experience, however, is that people often respond badly to such suggestions.
The AP reports it as less than 200k. It was free for those making less than 160k some years ago. They did that when there were some complaints about the size of their tax-free endowment.
Dartmouth particularly recruits qualified Indians (feather, not dot com) cuz of its racist history of teaching them to read since colonial times. Very few of them qualify (the qualification is undoubtedly race-normed, of course, and they probably all get free tuition), but most Feathers in general are happy to get a vo-tech certificate and a job, a big step up from firewater and wampum
Didn't he make a gag that they have a bit where they take the President of Harvard in to show him the secret truth behind admissions and merit on the first day of the job, and it's just a battered copy of The Bell Curve?
> “The last two years, we saw students who were in Math MA and faced a challenge that was unreasonable given the supports we had in the course. So we wanted to think about, ‘How can we create a course that really helps students step up to their aspirations?’” he said.
Well, they could have let them go to a college more in line with their abilities, but here we are.
Ten bucks says the person quoted saying "faced a challenge that was unreasonable given the supports we had in the course" has a Ph.D. in education.
(Same person goes on: "Students don’t have the skills that we had intended downstream in the curriculum, and so it creates different trajectories in students’ math abilities...")
That's why dorms should be "gender" specific with Mature and RESPONSIBLE adults of the same gender along with enforced curfews. A lot of unpleasant situations have occurred since colleges and universities instituted "open" dorms and these unpleasant situations were perpetuated not only by "ghetto" black men.
Students have been able to cheat their way through classes for several years now thanks to several cheating sites on the internet, and this will only get worse with AI.
I think many people don't quite grasp yet how profoundly AI is undermining the model of secondary and higher education that's dominated western countries for many decades, i.e. one based on lots of continuous assessment (i.e. essays you write in your own time) to balance off/often replace high-stakes timed exams.
There is simply no way to keep AI out of continuous assessment.
Many instructors in undergraduate math classes no longer assign homework because there are way on the internet to not only solve a problem but see every step that one would need to show on a test or homework assignment.
There are two ways about homework. When I did an additional math bsc, we were told: your homework will not go towards your grade. However you will find it hard to pass the final test if you didn't do graded homework on a regular basis.
A few profs had several people write out each answer on the blackboard, which kept people on their toes. Daily homework seemed essential for math and physics. You wouldn't know if you knew the material without constant trial and feedback (but it didn't help me grok relativity, it only told me I didn't). No homework bodes ill for future competence.
Yep - in differential equations we first did homework and instead of it being graded, we were called up to the blackboard in the exercise session to demonstrate the solution. Was fun!
OTOH, our large Chem classes didn't have homework, and the tests quickly weeded out the pre-med wannabes, so the college could continue trumpeting its high admittance to med school rate.
Sure - it can work either way. It is actually interesting how chemistry (not biology) is the subject that can be used to identify aptitude for medicine. I was told in UK, Chemistry A levels are a must for applying to a med school.
These have existed for quite a while. I've done faculty training on AI detection. The bottom line: AI detection isn't fully trustworthy, and false positives are devastating to the unlucky students who are unjustly accused, so it's hard to implement practically. Nevertheless, AI is built into, for example, Turnitin, a leading plagiarism detector (although using and AI and plagiarism are not quite the same thing).
Someone posted on twitter that...you know 25 years ago everyone remembered peoples' phone numbers and now nobody does? AI will make it like that, but for everything.
"faced a challenge that was unreasonable given the supports we had in the course"
What a weird and ugly way of describing the problem. Trying to tiptoe over feelings with club feet.
Does Harvard have a mathematics requirement for all majors that includes calculus? Students that ill prepared don't seem destined to major in elite-level STEM, but judging from my niece's experience at UCONN, STEM is now very fashionable for women. She didn't (and is currently a barista), but the rest of her dorm did.
Ugly yes, and an obvious dissimulation but still just about verging on comprehensible. But "Students don’t have the skills that we had intended downstream in the curriculum, and so it creates different trajectories in students’ math abilities" is nonsensical.
They might rather have said that although we already have a remedial math class, as this issue has been long in the making, it has now become apparent it was still too demanding for a number of our students. In our complacency we had not realised extending our franchise to the mentally subnormal might have consequences. Imagine how bad it would look if these idiots/members of the proposed future elite were to fail. We needed to address this as this level of stupidity would be difficult to hide from normal functional members of the public and we wouldn't want that. Can't have people coming to the conclusion that some types of Harvard men might effectively be imbeciles. Perhaps, if we give them daily tutoring on basic mathematical concepts for the whole year we can avoid their future humiliation and any adverse impact on the brand.
What would you want to do instead of analysis (=calculus)? For probability, you'll need calculus, for differential equations you'll need calculus, even for understanding the math behind regressions you'll need calculus. OK, you can still do General Algebra and Numbers Theory...
On the other hand, if people who studied Sociology or English Lit first had to do a Math BSc, we would never have to worry about them being unemployed after they complete their grad school.
> In my day, we took algebra in 9th grade. These days, most kids who would traditionally be considered Harvard Material take algebra in 8th or 7th grade.
What makes it worse is that even if a student wanted to wait to take Algebra I until Grade 9, the Common Core curriculum has students doing algebra in middle school whether or not they are developmentally ready for it. Meanwhile, I literally didn't see a variable in math class until I was in high school as middle-school math was just advanced arithmetic, but it sure helped me build number sense
It's the circular logic of people who are really good at advanced math make more money, so if we want more people to make more money, they need advanced math in action.
As my HS calc teacher explained, "You may ask yourself, when will I ever need to know this? Well, imagine you're walking down the street late at night and some shady character comes up to you, holds a gun to your head, and demands, 'What's the second derivative of x² + 4x + 2?' ...You'll be glad you learned this."
This is one subject in which the institution of tenure has been extraordinarily important over the last five years. As universities from elite to embarrasing have eliminated the requirement to submit test scores in order to let less-than- or unqualified students in, administrations have not been able to force faculty to pass these students. In my university (which is not elite), tenure has protected faculty members like me who fail these students (it has not prevented the administration from coming up with risible remedial classes in composition and math, but that's another story).
My alma mater, Princeton, also went in the same direction, and, from what I have heard from faculty and alums, their failure rate has increased significantly because faculty can fail people without getting fired.
So, as opposed to primary and secondary education in public schools where administrators regularly fire teachers who fail people, there is still an element (however small) at the university level who will enforce serious academic standards, whether they are at the Harvard/Princeton level or at the Southwesternnortheastern State University level.
I’m surprised that the pressure to not fail students especially of an under privileged background could be resisted. It seemed that every educational institution, board room, etc. in the country had to capitulate to DEI during the a George Floyd era. As I was outside of the country during this period I could only imagine the pressure people were under and why everyone capitulated so easily who knew better.
I'm glad to hear as well that you're still able to fail students with any regularity at a non-elite university. I know the pressure to retain students is intense at just about all colleges and universities that are not truly competitive in their admissions -- and even at many of those that are.
When you say that at Princeton the failure rate has increased significantly, since when? Is this post-BLM, or looking further back?
As a sanity check, I showed that algebra question to my 10 year-old and it took him all of about 2 seconds (literally) to give me the correct answer. To think that there are 18 year-olds at Harvard who can't figure this out in any amount of time is...distressing beyond belief.
That's just an image I grabbed from searching for "simple algebra." It's not (necessarily) representative of what kind of algebra Harvard students are struggling with.
My youngest daughter had to go to the high school for her Algebra 1 class when she was in 7th grade because they didn't offer it in middle school, which was a real pain in the ass for transportation. There were a bunch of middle school students in that first period high school Algebra class. Even my son, who was not mathematically gifted did calculus when he did Running Start when he was in 11th grade. You need the math to handle simple stat and finance classes - he did business. My daughter dropped out of school and when to the University of Washington after 10th grade, where she did engineering.
The tests show something - that you learned the material. If your field assumes mastery of the material tested upon, the test results are consequential and predictive.
If you have a motivated child, isn't it easier to just learn math on the internet? Whenever I revisit a topic from school (most recently quantum then special relativity) I'm struck by how much better videos on YouTube explain things than most of my teachers and text books.
I didn't say all schooling. I'm saying if you have a child who is so far ahead you have to drive her to the high school in 7th grade, maybe the internet for that one class.
I think you underestimate the difficulty of learning new materials as a child versus getting refresher courses as an adult or using your existing web of knowledge to learn something new. As an adult I find I can teach myself something new fairly quickly and sometimes wonder why school takes 12 years, but children still need to fill up empty space.
Probably. I don't think this could be applied to all children. There are issues of motivation, discipline and cheating to be dealt with. I just meant if you have a kid who needs algebra in 7th grade and it's inconvenient to drive to the high school, there could be an easy internet solution. Instructional videos plus GPT for many questions plus live internet tutor plus some kind of regular proctored testing. I dunno, I guess I'm as much an armchair expert on education as everyone else.
I actually had her do Geometry by correspondence (via Gifted Learning Links) the summer after 7th grade. She skipped 8th grade and did PreCalc the summer after 9th grade so that she was ready for Calculus in 10th grade. The school gave her placement, not credit. I had to do the geometry tutoring - and itt had literally been 50 years since I had had geometry.
When I was a kid I saw an episode of a children's educational show in which the adults who wrote it tried to amuse themselves with better writing than the show deserved. The one gag that stuck with me as bizarrely clever was the character who declared that he was a spelling major.
Chetty won a MacArthur "Genius" award for plagiarizing Sailer. Thousands of Claudine Gays will be operating on us. Thank the Obamassars on the Harvard Corporation board: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-get-into-harvard-gay-bobo-corporation
If you're going to advertise on someone else's substack, you ought to provide a free look, particularly if you're not one of his subscribers. Steve usually hikes up his kilt and shows some leg.
I find x, y and z to be 5, 3 and 2.
Anyone could have predicted “test optional” would be a failure.
Not Harvard, apparently.
Harvard knew exactly what would happen.
But they saw an opportunity to discriminate against white and yellow people, and they took it. They were willing to accept the consequences, for a while.
I don't think they realized their few elite schools had already vacuumed up all the brainy and prepared URMs before DEI took off, so when they began snatching them from the second tier post Floyd, they ended up with some 3rd tier students.
I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that Harvard didn't handle this better.
When they (and so many other universities) went test-optional, I figured Harvard's admissions office would have the skills and wherewithal to sort out the desired mix of DIE admits, Hollywood scions, legacies, and rich people kids, plus just enough genuinely smart kids to keep up their academic reputation. The real smarties, even without test scores, would still signal their potential through authentic academic competitions and other high-profile accomplishments.
But it seems it didn't work out. Maybe the admissions team got way too greedy with the DIE jihad, and just couldn't bear to limit their numbers to a reasonable (i.e. hide-able) level.
Anyway, I'm happy to be wrong on this one.
They seem like true believers to me. They really believed racism was holding these kids back and they would correct it through their moral superiority. In 2020 I doubt anyone on staff could have pushed back without getting fired.
It's not being true believers. If you suppress information about intelligence and heredity, no-one will know. Same as if you suppress reading, no-one will know how to read. This is exactly how human societies work, and also how they fail. It's not for nothing that the Russians 30 years after they abandoned communism have become a reasonable fighting force again.
Yet somehow we know, despite the suppression. If they're not true believers, they're fools.
We only know because we use clandestine, verboten information channels.
I meanSteve Sailer was cancelled like almost 20 odd years, right? He's been only put out of the freezer post-COVID, BLM, Ukraine and Gaza, because the big-tech formed the view that the woke islamo-gauchist coalition currently ruling the West is leading to its demise
It's a mistake to assume that the admissions office is the same cynical organization it was in the 1980s. It's surprisingly easy to lose institutional memory.
I think Steve argued this on his old blog. Back in the 80s people still remembered how things really worked, but after a few decades, since they couldn't admit the truth or someone might squeal, the knowledge was no longer passed down and the people actually believed the lies they were feeding everyone.
This is how human societies work all the time. In the middle ages the elite people were telling all the other people (A) someone was poisoning the wells, or (B) witches existed. So the whole society went on the rampage for either A or B.
The problem with Occam's razor is that it's awfully difficult to go around it and still get a clean shave.
It was an algebra question that didn’t need algebra. That’s a high level of corruption if this was a representative question.
It was just an image I found by searching on "simple algebra."
you don't even need to figure out y or z because once you figure out x you can just add it to equation 3(y+z) to solve x+y+z
It's so easy, I tried to make it more complicated for a few seconds.
My favorite part about this is how Harvard engages in insider trading to make this all palatable.
Possible slight correction:
"Harvard engages in insider trading to make this all _sustainable_."
Reminds me of an anecdote:
I was recently at a meeting with the Chairman of the Board of a prominent charity. The meeting was about something else. That he was Chairman of this charity came up only incidentally. Being more of a businessman than charity-man, he couldn't resist a bit of bragging about how well the charity's endowment was doing, which I suppose reflected well on him as Chairman. Then he started complaining about how the Federal DOGE cuts had reduced some of the charity's research grants.
As I say, we had other business, but I wanted to say, "Didn't you just mention you have a big endowment? You could always pay for YOUR research with YOUR endowment. I mean, that's what it's for."
My experience, however, is that people often respond badly to such suggestions.
Harvard just announced free tuition to any kid coming from a sub $100,000 household:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/03/harvard-expands-financial-aid/
The AP reports it as less than 200k. It was free for those making less than 160k some years ago. They did that when there were some complaints about the size of their tax-free endowment.
Yes, Harvard really should purchase a few hundred subscriptions to your substack.
Racism turns everything to crap. Not regular, old-fashioned racism. The new, antiracist kind.
Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT too.
Dartmouth particularly recruits qualified Indians (feather, not dot com) cuz of its racist history of teaching them to read since colonial times. Very few of them qualify (the qualification is undoubtedly race-normed, of course, and they probably all get free tuition), but most Feathers in general are happy to get a vo-tech certificate and a job, a big step up from firewater and wampum
Didn't he make a gag that they have a bit where they take the President of Harvard in to show him the secret truth behind admissions and merit on the first day of the job, and it's just a battered copy of The Bell Curve?
> “The last two years, we saw students who were in Math MA and faced a challenge that was unreasonable given the supports we had in the course. So we wanted to think about, ‘How can we create a course that really helps students step up to their aspirations?’” he said.
Well, they could have let them go to a college more in line with their abilities, but here we are.
Liberalism Fail #753,296,152.
Ten bucks says the person quoted saying "faced a challenge that was unreasonable given the supports we had in the course" has a Ph.D. in education.
(Same person goes on: "Students don’t have the skills that we had intended downstream in the curriculum, and so it creates different trajectories in students’ math abilities...")
What are the "unfortunate incidents in the dorms"?
*I can guess, but I'm assuming that this is referring to some specific series of infamous violent incidents.
Something something ghetto blacks in the women's corridor after hours something something.
"That's not a subject of public discussion."
—Harvard, probably
That's why dorms should be "gender" specific with Mature and RESPONSIBLE adults of the same gender along with enforced curfews. A lot of unpleasant situations have occurred since colleges and universities instituted "open" dorms and these unpleasant situations were perpetuated not only by "ghetto" black men.
Some of those 'diamonds in the rough' were really, really rough. And not diamonds, either.
Or they were in the pre-diamond stage, which as we know is coal.
> which led to some unfortunate incidents in the dorms
This is like referring to the situation in Northern Ireland as The Troubles
Vibrancy or what Norm MacDonald would likely refer to as the rapings
Students have been able to cheat their way through classes for several years now thanks to several cheating sites on the internet, and this will only get worse with AI.
Right.
I think many people don't quite grasp yet how profoundly AI is undermining the model of secondary and higher education that's dominated western countries for many decades, i.e. one based on lots of continuous assessment (i.e. essays you write in your own time) to balance off/often replace high-stakes timed exams.
There is simply no way to keep AI out of continuous assessment.
Many instructors in undergraduate math classes no longer assign homework because there are way on the internet to not only solve a problem but see every step that one would need to show on a test or homework assignment.
There are two ways about homework. When I did an additional math bsc, we were told: your homework will not go towards your grade. However you will find it hard to pass the final test if you didn't do graded homework on a regular basis.
A few profs had several people write out each answer on the blackboard, which kept people on their toes. Daily homework seemed essential for math and physics. You wouldn't know if you knew the material without constant trial and feedback (but it didn't help me grok relativity, it only told me I didn't). No homework bodes ill for future competence.
Yep - in differential equations we first did homework and instead of it being graded, we were called up to the blackboard in the exercise session to demonstrate the solution. Was fun!
OTOH, our large Chem classes didn't have homework, and the tests quickly weeded out the pre-med wannabes, so the college could continue trumpeting its high admittance to med school rate.
Sure - it can work either way. It is actually interesting how chemistry (not biology) is the subject that can be used to identify aptitude for medicine. I was told in UK, Chemistry A levels are a must for applying to a med school.
One of my student children has told me that there are programs now that can determine whether you have used AI to complete an essay.
These have existed for quite a while. I've done faculty training on AI detection. The bottom line: AI detection isn't fully trustworthy, and false positives are devastating to the unlucky students who are unjustly accused, so it's hard to implement practically. Nevertheless, AI is built into, for example, Turnitin, a leading plagiarism detector (although using and AI and plagiarism are not quite the same thing).
Thanks for the information.
Someone posted on twitter that...you know 25 years ago everyone remembered peoples' phone numbers and now nobody does? AI will make it like that, but for everything.
10
"faced a challenge that was unreasonable given the supports we had in the course"
What a weird and ugly way of describing the problem. Trying to tiptoe over feelings with club feet.
Does Harvard have a mathematics requirement for all majors that includes calculus? Students that ill prepared don't seem destined to major in elite-level STEM, but judging from my niece's experience at UCONN, STEM is now very fashionable for women. She didn't (and is currently a barista), but the rest of her dorm did.
Ugly yes, and an obvious dissimulation but still just about verging on comprehensible. But "Students don’t have the skills that we had intended downstream in the curriculum, and so it creates different trajectories in students’ math abilities" is nonsensical.
They might rather have said that although we already have a remedial math class, as this issue has been long in the making, it has now become apparent it was still too demanding for a number of our students. In our complacency we had not realised extending our franchise to the mentally subnormal might have consequences. Imagine how bad it would look if these idiots/members of the proposed future elite were to fail. We needed to address this as this level of stupidity would be difficult to hide from normal functional members of the public and we wouldn't want that. Can't have people coming to the conclusion that some types of Harvard men might effectively be imbeciles. Perhaps, if we give them daily tutoring on basic mathematical concepts for the whole year we can avoid their future humiliation and any adverse impact on the brand.
What would you want to do instead of analysis (=calculus)? For probability, you'll need calculus, for differential equations you'll need calculus, even for understanding the math behind regressions you'll need calculus. OK, you can still do General Algebra and Numbers Theory...
Do non-STEM majors need it? Oh, the Humanities! crashing and burning on derivatives.
General Algebra would have been tougher, lol.
On the other hand, if people who studied Sociology or English Lit first had to do a Math BSc, we would never have to worry about them being unemployed after they complete their grad school.
> In my day, we took algebra in 9th grade. These days, most kids who would traditionally be considered Harvard Material take algebra in 8th or 7th grade.
What makes it worse is that even if a student wanted to wait to take Algebra I until Grade 9, the Common Core curriculum has students doing algebra in middle school whether or not they are developmentally ready for it. Meanwhile, I literally didn't see a variable in math class until I was in high school as middle-school math was just advanced arithmetic, but it sure helped me build number sense
It's the circular logic of people who are really good at advanced math make more money, so if we want more people to make more money, they need advanced math in action.
This is basically how they thought college worked. Send everyone to college and everyone will make more money. No need for blue collar jobs!
The one bit of math I'm good at is arithmetic, but, boy, is that helpful in life.
As my HS calc teacher explained, "You may ask yourself, when will I ever need to know this? Well, imagine you're walking down the street late at night and some shady character comes up to you, holds a gun to your head, and demands, 'What's the second derivative of x² + 4x + 2?' ...You'll be glad you learned this."
This is one subject in which the institution of tenure has been extraordinarily important over the last five years. As universities from elite to embarrasing have eliminated the requirement to submit test scores in order to let less-than- or unqualified students in, administrations have not been able to force faculty to pass these students. In my university (which is not elite), tenure has protected faculty members like me who fail these students (it has not prevented the administration from coming up with risible remedial classes in composition and math, but that's another story).
My alma mater, Princeton, also went in the same direction, and, from what I have heard from faculty and alums, their failure rate has increased significantly because faculty can fail people without getting fired.
So, as opposed to primary and secondary education in public schools where administrators regularly fire teachers who fail people, there is still an element (however small) at the university level who will enforce serious academic standards, whether they are at the Harvard/Princeton level or at the Southwesternnortheastern State University level.
I’m surprised that the pressure to not fail students especially of an under privileged background could be resisted. It seemed that every educational institution, board room, etc. in the country had to capitulate to DEI during the a George Floyd era. As I was outside of the country during this period I could only imagine the pressure people were under and why everyone capitulated so easily who knew better.
I'm glad to hear as well that you're still able to fail students with any regularity at a non-elite university. I know the pressure to retain students is intense at just about all colleges and universities that are not truly competitive in their admissions -- and even at many of those that are.
When you say that at Princeton the failure rate has increased significantly, since when? Is this post-BLM, or looking further back?
This is strictly post-BLM/St. George Floyd.
As a sanity check, I showed that algebra question to my 10 year-old and it took him all of about 2 seconds (literally) to give me the correct answer. To think that there are 18 year-olds at Harvard who can't figure this out in any amount of time is...distressing beyond belief.
That's just an image I grabbed from searching for "simple algebra." It's not (necessarily) representative of what kind of algebra Harvard students are struggling with.
But then again ...
Is there a Substack requirement that every post have an image?
It's not exactly required by Substack, but it looks much worse if you don't include an image.
My youngest daughter had to go to the high school for her Algebra 1 class when she was in 7th grade because they didn't offer it in middle school, which was a real pain in the ass for transportation. There were a bunch of middle school students in that first period high school Algebra class. Even my son, who was not mathematically gifted did calculus when he did Running Start when he was in 11th grade. You need the math to handle simple stat and finance classes - he did business. My daughter dropped out of school and when to the University of Washington after 10th grade, where she did engineering.
The tests show something - that you learned the material. If your field assumes mastery of the material tested upon, the test results are consequential and predictive.
If you have a motivated child, isn't it easier to just learn math on the internet? Whenever I revisit a topic from school (most recently quantum then special relativity) I'm struck by how much better videos on YouTube explain things than most of my teachers and text books.
Do you remember the year 2020? And its weaker neighbor, 2021?
The model or theory you are alluding to -- Just Do All Schooling Thru Internet, It'll Be Fine -- was tried. I believe it was found to be wanting.
Isaac Newton learned some math staying home from school for 18 months in the plague year of 1666.
But for mortals ...
I didn't say all schooling. I'm saying if you have a child who is so far ahead you have to drive her to the high school in 7th grade, maybe the internet for that one class.
I think you underestimate the difficulty of learning new materials as a child versus getting refresher courses as an adult or using your existing web of knowledge to learn something new. As an adult I find I can teach myself something new fairly quickly and sometimes wonder why school takes 12 years, but children still need to fill up empty space.
True, but as an elderly adult I wonder how anybody learned anything.
Probably. I don't think this could be applied to all children. There are issues of motivation, discipline and cheating to be dealt with. I just meant if you have a kid who needs algebra in 7th grade and it's inconvenient to drive to the high school, there could be an easy internet solution. Instructional videos plus GPT for many questions plus live internet tutor plus some kind of regular proctored testing. I dunno, I guess I'm as much an armchair expert on education as everyone else.
I actually had her do Geometry by correspondence (via Gifted Learning Links) the summer after 7th grade. She skipped 8th grade and did PreCalc the summer after 9th grade so that she was ready for Calculus in 10th grade. The school gave her placement, not credit. I had to do the geometry tutoring - and itt had literally been 50 years since I had had geometry.
Counting 101.
When I was a kid I saw an episode of a children's educational show in which the adults who wrote it tried to amuse themselves with better writing than the show deserved. The one gag that stuck with me as bizarrely clever was the character who declared that he was a spelling major.
Good cogent column Steve. It would be nice if we started weighting our governing class with the 50 States' flagship universities instead.