Is math used in modern culture discriminatory?

[CharonY]

13 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

My little brother fails tests quite regularly

What you are referring to is about individual differences in learning, which is one of the big challenges of using a class as a teaching tool. And you should know that the way we teach subjects such as maths has been changing all the time with all types of methods being explored. The basic idea is often to address systemic issues, though I will also say that overall to me it seems that the variables are so vast (i.e. student background, teacher abilities, class composition, issues outside school etc.) are so vast that curricula and their application are only a small part in it. And it is important to note that there is certainly no perfect curriculum nor is the current one necessarily better or worse than the previous or future ones. They have always been changing to various degree and (at least to my knowledge) there are only few instances where objectively big advances. As mentioned, I still need to dissuade students from things they learned in highschool and issues that seem to increase (e.g. decreasing attention span) do not seem to be related to school but due to other distractions. 

That being said, one of the ideas of infusing ethnic studies is likely to address certain systemic gaps, especially in Hispanic and African American students (there are also gaps in  Asian students , mostly in science rather than math, but they close rather rapidly and then overtake their white peers). While some studies have shown effectiveness in that approach, I am not sure whether it would work in broad implementation. 

There is also the discrepancy between what students and teachers want to do and what the effectiveness of it may be. For example, there is a big push in universities toward increased student engagement. There is recently a paper (and it aligns well with mine and my colleague's experience when trying it out) that shows that students really hate it. And for educators it is quite a bit of extra work all for getting worse student evaluations. The weird thing however, is that it actually seem to work (when applied well). Student scores go up, despite the fact that they hate the course more (our interpretation is that they simply hate to be forced to engage).

So in other words, effective measures may actually be universally hated. It is upon the educator to figure out a good method that works well with them and having more options is generally a good thing. At the same time I do realize that there is no optimal method. Each big attempt (worldwide) to create a new teaching method at best has moderate success and I believe it is down to the huge number of variables involvement. In the US segregation in schools is still an issue and is associated with overall lower scores of all students, in Germany there were studies showing that students had lower math scores for exactly the same errors as their peers, when they had foreign names. This also illustrates that despite the fact that many like to put maths and science on a pedestal of objectivity, the actual engagement with it (be it teaching or research) is ultimately a human endeavor and all our follies and biases will be translated to them. At minimum, we should be aware of these issues, at best we should try (and probably fail) addressing those. 

In the end, education is not a finely tuned system. To, me it always looked more like a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. In addition, there are challenges in the changing education landscape. The idea of higher education has changed massively from personal improvement to an almost vocational demand. And then we have inter-generational conflict (I could go on a rant on how things have changed within one or two decades, but won't) but this all just means that educators will have to get used to changing landscapes, and, eventually they will (at the latest, when the new generations of educators come up).

Maybe soon everything we teach has to be 400 characters or less. Who knows.

[MigL]

Education, and learning, isn't about what educators give you; it's about what you take from them.
That is why everyone learns differently.
( incidentally I was always very artistic )

[CharonY]

45 minutes ago, MigL said:

Education, and learning, isn't about what educators give you; it's about what you take from them.
That is why everyone learns differently.
( incidentally I was always very artistic )

That is certainly true and I wished folks would realize that. But of course students see it differently. And one of the most heartbreaking questions is: "is it going to be on the exam?"

In a way a broad and varied teaching approach can help insofar that it increases the chance that someone finds a learning style that suits them. Whereas a rather rigorous approach implies that you have to learn a certain way. 

[Raider5678]

7 hours ago, CharonY said:

eventually they will (at the latest, when the new generations of educators come up).

And yet, with the incredibly fast pace of cultural and technological advancement these days, that 4 years to become a teacher means the students are in a totally different world. 

[CharonY]

Well, at least they still roughly know what the kids are talking about, cause I certainly don't.