Over the last 40 years I've known and worked with some of these people, and I marvel at their tenacity and the sheer force of will they have to succeed. It just blows me away. Sadly, it seems to disappear from the next generation. I'll admit that I have a small sample size.

I don't know what component is responsible for the difference between immigrants and natives. Maybe it's the selection, the change of environment, the adversity, or sheer diversity of individuals. If we could manage to build an education system that produced students as dedicated, creative and hard working as our best immigrants, the USA would secure a place in history that would make the 1400 years of the Roman Empire seem like a blip in comparison.

These people are actively undermining the American spirit - I am saying this as an immigrant to USA and a person of color. I am fine with understanding racism in USA, it is completely unacceptable to inject this into STEM education. The next generation is going to grow up learning more about race at the expense of learning mathematics.

This isn't just my opinion - professors from UC Berkeley/Stanford and many major universities have written an open letter to the California Governor: https://www.independent.org/news/news_detail.asp?newsid=2287

Apparently, the message was clear and the California government is pausing this initiative: https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/yr21/agenda202107.asp

This disgusts me. Some kids are stupid (Apologies for blunt language, but it's true, life is unfair.) or have poor home lives, so let's remove education that can help them have better lives because some of the struggling kids are black. Counterintuitive, oversensitive, and directly hindering

Dragging everyone down because some diversity quotas aren't met is awful. Unless there's clear evidence that teaching advanced math directly contributes to racism, teach it, make it harder. Make our kids work and succeed and fail again.

What about the black overachievers? Princeton certainly didn't lower the bar for him [0]

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/10/us/princeton-first-black-vale...

I'm not even saying that black kids have any inherent disadvantages, but that people have become so sensitive to that perception as to seriously hinder actual education.

Seriously, people are worried about racial sensitivity in math. These two things do not go together, should not go together, and have almost zero reason to interact.

Instead of paying for a committee of bureaucrats (with generous pensions!) to write about "racism in math", why not hire a couple of undergrads as extra tutors for students of color struggling with math?

Overcorrection is the norm.

Probably because incrementalism simply isn't possible. So when reform does happen, it releases decades of bottled up pressure. Like a dam bursting.

I don't have a dog in this fight. I've seen too many of these spasms to care too much.

That said, my hot take on bias training is two fold.

1) Bias training for teachers (and every other profession) is long overdue. This is indisputable.

2) I'm unaware of any validation which shows bias training for students is worthwhile. Maybe it is. But hippocratic oath dictates that we figure this out before committing.

Teachers et al should dog food their own training for a while. Lead by example. See how well it works.

My hunch is that students will pick up most of the important lessons thru osmosis.

Simply removing teacher-born biases, those negative role models, certainly couldn't hurt.

The big problem to me is that teaching math is hard, and teaching math well, as recommended in that booklet, is really hard. You can write all the pamphlets you want, but in the end the answer will be about the same - get really good teachers. Which probably means paying teachers a lot more than we do now.

It is strange that you think that letter would change my opinion though. It doesn't really contain any analysis or arguments. It just says that the changes are bad, and here is a long list of people that agree. After having read the actual document, why would you think reading that letter would change my mind?

Originally, you linked to a pamphlet and implied that the authors of the pamphlet were "actively undermining the American spirit". I pointed out that the packet appeared to provide good advice for math instruction. You responded "perhaps you should question your stance based on what apparently is a marketing pamphlet precisely designed to persuade people". Why did you link to it then?

What information are you pointing me to that would "convince [me] otherwise"? I read the letter you linked to, and it provides no arguments. As I said previously, it is mostly a list of names of people who are publicly stating their disagreement with a different document - literally appeal to authority fallacy.

I think you would be surprised how much we are aligned on the importance of math education. I'm an engineer from a family of engineers. I clicked your link because I have a son starting kindergarten in a California public school in two and a half weeks. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the math education being advocated appeared better than the one I received, not worse.

It's important to show what the marketing material is - verbatim - and what kind of BS is being peddled by these people. Apparently, you didn't find it BS so I asked you to read up on it.

I am not following your logic in this entire argument chain. Let's move on.

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

But have access to fewer resources, networks, capital, markets etc..

Also, the % of US immigrants that are on the 'high end' is relatively smaller.

Migration to the US, when you include off the books migration, is a little bit towards the low skilled end.

But definitely the smaller relative portion of 'hardcore talent' is still actually quite large in real terms, and yes, they do disproportionately contribute. It frankly doesn't take a large quantity.

For instance, look at Russia! Their engineers are probably twice as crazy as Americans, but they have very little room to do crazy things with that talent. They don't have trillions of US dollars being sheltered in their tech startups by VC funds.

I think this mostly populist myth.

It's definitely possible for people to do 'great things' but there are innumerable factors beyond that. 'Passion' I would say is not even an important or necessary element.

'Grit' is probably necessary, but not nearly sufficient either.

That anything is possible, doesn't mean that it's remotely likely to happen even with unlimited 'passion and grit', or even talent.

So their bankers and politicians just can't compete.