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How US Schools' Culture Stifles Math Achievement
Zarf writes "I'd like to file a bug report on the US educational system. The New York Times reports on a recent study that shows the US fails to encourage academic talent as a culture.'"There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn't really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics," said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.'s math department. "Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none."' While we've suspected that the US might be falling behind academically, this study shows that it is actually due to cultural factors that are devaluing the success of our students. I suspect there's a flaw in the US cultural system that prevents achievement on the academic front from being perceived as valuable. Could anyone suggest a patch for this bug or is this cause for a rewrite?"
Also, they're elitist because they don't trust individuals to make decisions about their own lives. Elitists think everyone is a child that needs a government parent to make their choices and take care of them. Elitists know how fast you should drive, where you should live, where you should work, how much you should be paid, what you should buy, what you should eat, and how long you should wait in line at the government health center when you get sick.
They are smarter than you. They know they are. You should be happy to have these people make your choices for you. You couldn't do it yourself. You'd just mess it up, like you always do. Trust them because they're better than you.
However, one major tenet of Negro culture is the disdain for academics and learning. In Negro culture mathematics is perhaps the most scorned of all academic endeavors. In the parlance of the Negro, to excel in mathematics is to "act white"
As a footnote, let us examine the list of great mathematicians and physicists who are Negroes:
Or at least that's the way that the people in government see it.
It's a lot easier to manipulate a population that can't do the math that would let them see through a lot of the propaganda, or handle their own finances.
(Note that some "experts" are now recommending that algebra no longer be taught in K-12, claiming that "nobody uses it" anymore...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The seeds of this idea comes from the "popular" cultural ideas that if your smart or educated, then your not "one of us"
So I guess your "one of us" then.
That might have been true a century or so back, when the term "conservative" was understood to mean someone who wanted to conserve the social order. But in modern America, the people who call themselves "conservative" are mostly radical reformers who want to replace the centuries-old culture of individual freedom with an authoritarian religious system.
In the current American school systems, conservatives are mostly heard from when they are pushing to block science teaching. They have had a fair amount of success. Thus, if you look at high-school and lower biology texts from the 1940s and 1950s, you'll usually see a section on evolution. Today, few biology texts below the college level even mention the topic, from fear of the "conservative" religious people in the community. Thus, the conservatives in this case have forced a change that resulted in lower quality education.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Sure it will. How many Klu Klax Klansmen does it take to hang a nigger? I bet most people here can't answer it.
The general knee-jerk reaction is to blame teachers, but this misses the nature of the problem. The problem lies in how the concept of learning has evolved in the US. Ideas about learning arise from concepts of what is knowledge.
Recent emphasis on doctrinaire religious belief is stifling mathematics training, as well as in other sciences such as biology, by imposing the idea that knowledge comes from "God" rather than from critical thinking. It comes from a false belief that "God" is the solution to all questions and consequently, knowledge is seen as a matter of belief and a looking to authority. Unfortunately, developing skills in mathematics requires critical thinking and critical thinking requires questioning, not just authority but one's own preconceptions. If you can't question your own preconceptions and understand the consequences of your preconceptions, you will be unable to do much math.
In other societies the notion of "God" is not so strongly authoritarian as it is in the US. Rather it is more detached and distant concept, consequently requiring more critical thinking on the part of believers.