California's Attempt to "Close the Gap" in Math Education

Did you see that story in California by the way about how they're going to try and reteach math? Did you see this one from the New York Times? What? Yeah, solid. Reteach math? So they're going to figure out how to teach math differently. They said that they don't want to have, they're getting rid of some of the objective standards with regard to math because math is, and they want to get rid of the idea that there are naturally gifted children. They said they're not allowed to say that they're naturally gifted children anymore when it comes to math. They still have a case with New York as well? Didn't they get rid of the different schools? They're trying to get rid of the magnet schools over there too. But gifted programs. Yes, the gifted programs because there's too many Asian kids. Hahaha. America's white supremacist, so all the Asians are succeeding. I love that narrative. So now what are they trying to do with math? So it was this article in the New York Times and I'm trying to remember all the details. They said you're not allowed to talk about naturally gifted kids. You're not supposed to reward right answers or punish wrong answers. What? Yeah, so there's like a big kind of parents revolt going on in California over this because the idea was that there was too much racial disparity in math performance in California. And so changed the standards, which by the way, I can't think of anything more racist than that. That is so super racist. It's like not enough black kids are scoring well on the test. That means that black kids, I guess, are too dumb to do well on these tests, get rid of the tests. Or alternatively, there's an explanation where kids need to study more when you only find out if someone knows things, if you test them, it's the only way you find out. How else do you find out? You have to like, say, show me how to do this problem. And then the kid tries and you go, oh, that's not how you do it. By the way, I think this is like entire. I think the scam that is college is predicated on society trying to get around the basic truth that you just said, which is we can tell by test scores whether you know things that aren't good at things. Well, I mean, obviously there's some tests that favor people that have grown up in certain environments because you have more access to certain kinds of information. But once you teach people and then you test them, there's only one way to find out whether or not they know the information. They have to be tested. The idea that you're going to eliminate tests and somehow make things more equitable or more even is kind of crazy. Actually, what you're going to do is you're going to make people more racist is what you're going to do. And the reason for that is because Thomas Sowell talks about this. He talks about different types of discrimination and he says there's group discrimination where you base your perception of an individual on the group data that is available. And then there's like discrimination discrimination, which is you know that a person is smart and there are a group you don't like and so you just ignore the fact they're smart because they're from that group. So the two examples that he gives, right, is let's say that you're walking down the street at night and it's in an inner city neighborhood and there's a black guy walking down the street and he's wearing a hoodie and he's a young guy, 17 years old. Are you going to cross the street or not if the opposing example is an 80 year old white woman? Right? And he says, well, you know, based on the group statistics, you're probably going to cross the street more often if it's the 17 year old black kid than if it's the 80 year old white woman. Now, let's say that that 17 year old white kid, that 17 year old black kid, you know, you know the kid, he's a nice kid. If you still cross the street, that's what makes you like a super giant racist. In the former case, you're just using the group data available. The problem is that using group data available very often is wrong, right? What if the 17 year old kid is a nice kid, right? You shouldn't be doing that either. You need specific data. Test data is specific data. So let's say now that you are an administrator at a college and you're not allowed to use test data. All you know is that on average black kids score lower than white kids. Right? So who do you let in? How do you make that decision? Wouldn't it be better for black kids for you to have the test data because you know which black kids definitely deserve to get in as opposed to which ones don't deserve to get in. So you start using stupid generalizations. The whole point is more specific data is better. More specific data fights discrimination. And yet we have this whole weird idea that if we get rid of specific data, if we get rid of test data, objective data, this is going to end discrimination precisely the reverse will occur. People will start using stupid stereotypes. Watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify.