The article itself says that students who want to go ahead will get private lessons.

The idea is not stopping people to get more advanced classes, the idea is to cancel more advanced classes as long as "normal pace" classes are not present.

The way it works is that if you put an advanced class and no normal pace class, people who need the normal pace class will fail school over and over again and finally drop out of it, and people will just say "the advanced class is just a normal pace class" without realising it's not the case.

This is a ridiculously privileged view that hurts the people it claims to help.

As a child, I was heavily invested in math, but I was raised by a mother who had no resources or inclination to pay for private lessons. Luckily my public school district had a few advanced classes available for all, and along with my own initiative, I was able to scrounge up a passable math education.

> The way it works is that if you put an advanced class and no normal pace class,

Caveat: I didn't grow up in California. I don't know how public schools are run there. That being said, this sounds like nonsense to me. There were always normal pace classes for students who excelled less. These were, in my experience, the most populated classes.

I'm not saying it is what it will happen, I'm saying that some says "this measure is stupid, smart students will get private lessons anyway" and other are saying "this measure is stupid, smart students are forced to not learn".

All I was saying was: if you think that the "private lessons" argument is elitist or unrealistic, then you should disagree with the author of the article.

Canceling advanced classes quite literally prevents people from taking those classes.

If someone doesn't want to do the advanced classes, they don't have to. But don't prevent others from taking those classes if they want to take them.

> people who need the normal pace class

This is about allowing people to take the advanced classes if they choose, and allowing others to take normal classes.

And other people, who want to cancel the advanced classes, are definitely the ones who want to dumb things down.

Just allow people to take those advanced classes if they choose, and allow others to take take the normal classes. Problem solved.

1) You've cut my sentence, which says "cancel more advanced classes IF ...", which means that not all advanced classes are cancelled.

2) You are therefore asking to cancel "beginner's classes". I'm saying "cancel advanced classes as long as there are not enough beginner classes", so you are in practice canceling beginner classes. As any "advanced class" student was first a "beginner class" student, you are canceling the path towards advanced class.

> This is about allowing people to take the advanced classes if they choose, and allowing others to take normal classes.

Quickly looking closer to this, it was NEVER QUESTION TO CANCEL ADVANCED CLASSES. Simply, instead of algebra, do advanced data science (basically statistics), which is probably 1) more challenging, 2) more engaging, 3) more practical.

> Just allow people to take those advanced classes if they choose, and allow others to take take the normal classes. Problem solved.

Which problem exactly? It looks like the "no advanced classes" is just people on the internet getting all exited for something that was never considered.

No, people are not asking to do this, lol. The complaint is about the education report that opposed students being allowed to study algebra in advanced classes.

Thats what this is about.

> Simply, instead of algebra, do advanced data science

Ok, so algebra is being cancelled. Yeah, thats the problem!

> Which problem exactly?

The problem of not being able to take algebra classes.

Obviously, nobody is just coming and saying "lol, I hate children, I want people to be dumb, I will stop them being educated".

The reason this report proposes to replace algebra by data science is because this report argues that data science is making people as smart as algebra, but also, unlike algebra, it does not stop some people to get smart.

(in more details: algebra is a lot of "learn by heart" and is mainly a preparation for higher studies with a learning curve that blocks more people, which means people who have not the luxury to take it will not take it)

> Ok, so algebra classes are being cancelled. Yeah, thats the problem!

They are replaced by something better, and removing them stop some students to end up less smart. Is that really a problem?

I'm sure algebra have some good sides (it's good to get good foundations when someone wants to study math, for example, without being indispensable), but is it worth the cost on other students?

> The problem of not being able to take algebra classes.

And yet before this proposal, no one was able to take data science classes, and no one (and not you) were complaining. Isn't that a bit unfair: you don't mind a world without data science classes (despite the fact that they are better than algebra), but a world without algebra is suddenly a problem (well, not "without algebra", you can still do algebra, just not in the same order)

Ok, so it is replacing stuff! Not sure why you had to go through so many posts to just admit that.

And people have a problem with what is being replaced.

If you wanted to say that support the replacement of algebra, you should have just said that from the beginning instead of doing this whole rigmarole.

But other people very much do not want this option taken away from them and step one to talking about this is at least admitting that, yes, algebra is being replaced.

Of course algebra is being replaced, where do I say anything different.

I guess my mistake is assuming my interlocutors are not idiots and want to debate the reason of the replacement rather than just staying on "I like Algebra so I'm crying like a baby".

> And people have a problem with what is being replaced.

This is what I don't understand. They don't have any arguments to support the fact that the replacement is not bringing more supported "pro" than "con".

I personally like Algebra, and I would have loved it to stay. The same way I like the convenience of fastfood. But when a study shows that for the same price, they can replace a fastfood menu to a better menu in a school, the normal thing to do is to weight the pros and cons, not just cry because I prefer fastfood.

It is interesting to see that some people who present themselves as on the side of reason will act so irrationally to oppose some proposal without caring of the pros and cons, just because it feels negative in their feelings.

1. Why this initiative is a problem

2. That simply rewording "slow" to "normal" and "normal" to "advanced" seems to constitute the majority of your argument, without which there isn't a good one

Estimating if the pace is "fast" or "normal" is very very complicated. Only an idiot will pretend they know for sure that "this is too slow" (unless obvious extreme cases which don't correspond to what we have here)

Also, apparently, the measure was to replace advanced algebra by advanced data science which was in fact more challenging than the initial recite-by-heart-the-formula algebra lessons.

then, with that data, you will know to replace "terribly fast" with the original "slow", and can try to make your proposal not depend purely on the semantics of inaccurately renaming "slow" to "terribly fast"

remember, you are the one who started these word games by renaming the slow curriculum the normal one, when the normal one is the one they had before these changes, the one which reflected the norm (hence the name) in the US

if you think that one is actually "advanced", that's upon you to convincingly make the case for, otherwise we default back to the above, but a purely semantic argument is pretty weak on its own anyways

also, the last paragraph of your post presents a false dichotomy: creating a new class doesn't require cancelling advanced algebra (advanced advanced algebra?)

Except that you have not done that. Where are your data? Did you make sure that the group you compared are representative to each other? How do you correct for all the differences in state (unemployment level, diversity in education, political orientation, level of rurality, ...) that all have an effect? ...

So, no, it is objectively pretty complicated. You should have taken advanced data science, you would understand better that just comparing 2 states is very very naive to draw conclusions.

> remember, you are the one who started these word games by renaming the slow curriculum the normal one, when the normal one is the one they had before these changes, the one which reflected the norm (hence the name) in the US

In fact, I was not the one who started: the measure that is in question in the article has been proposed because people have done a study (a real one, comparing the numbers, you know, the thing that you say one should do before saying if it is slow or not but that you did not do) and concluded that there was a problem.

The document is 1000 pages long, of course it covers the elements that support their proposal (and you should agree with that as you say it's not complicated). These elements were themselves critized (maybe correctly), so it is funny to see that sometimes the argument is "their base study is badly done" and sometimes it is "I claim that I know what is 'slow' or not, without study, which is fine because if someone says it's not, they have just renamed without study"

If a team came up and say "we had a look and concluded that we should replace algebra by data science" and you just say "naaah, I have ZERO study on the subject, but I want to believe that algebra is fine", when someone says "but the point is that algebra is not fine", you cannot say "you haven't done a study": YOU are the one who pretend that the measure is not supported by the data, while you are the one having not looked at the data.

(and don't get me wrong, it does not mean that the study done by the people who proposed these measures is perfect or even correct. On the opposite: such study is difficult. If you now claim their study is invalid, it just show that 1) it is true it's complicated, 2) you don't care about the reality as you didn't even consider that they may have been backed by a study, you just assumed there was none because it was more convenient for you)

> also, the last paragraph of your post presents a false dichotomy: creating a new class doesn't require cancelling advanced algebra (advanced advanced algebra?)

What are you talking about: I'm not saying they had to remove advanced algebra in order to introduce advance data science, I'm saying they decided to replace something that they think is not challenging, engaging and useful enough by something more challenging, more engaging and more useful.

And if you think "aaaah, it's awful because before there was algebra and now there is no algebra, so it tortures the poor students who like algebra", why were you not crying about the poor students who like data science that was "canceled" before this proposal.

It's your responsibility, not mine, to prove that what was normal before is now "advanced" by the standards of the country, and that slow is now "normal"

> I'm not saying they had to remove advanced algebra in order to introduce advance data science, I'm saying they decided to replace something that they think is not challenging...

this contradicts the assertion that the class was too advanced, now it's not advanced enough? Doubt. Plus, you yourself are using the word "replace", here meaning removing 1 class and adding another: two acts. There's nothing requiring them to remove the first class, and there doesn't seem to be a convincing case for doing so. If you want to have a new class, go ahead, but don't nuke good, unrelated classes in the process.

>...by something more challenging, more engaging and more useful

is it, though? That's what they say, on 1 side of the issue, but it doesn't seem like that's the case, and again, both are useful, so that's not a valid excuse for nuking 1

I've answered that already: the demonstration is in the 1000 pages of the report supporting the measure debated here.

> this contradicts the assertion that the class was too advanced, now it's not advanced enough?

This is not complicated. I'm saying we need a correct entry-level, followed by a correct advanced level. I was just saying: "This measure does not dumb down people if they allow them to enter something they were not able to enter before. Moreover, I've also noticed that some people here seems to think that this measure implies that everything will ever be entry-level, which is not true, they are also doing advanced-level for students who have a faster pace"

> Plus, you yourself are using the word "replace", here meaning removing 1 class and adding another: two acts.

That's correct, well done. Let's see another example: yesterday, I've downloaded a movie, this morning, I've replaced this activity by listening to music. 2 acts. Yet, no false dichotomy.

> There's nothing requiring them to remove the first class, and there doesn't seem to be a convincing case for doing so. If you want to have a new class, go ahead, but don't nuke good, unrelated classes in the process.

Say the person who has absolutely no idea of the intricacy of designing an education program. They have to compose the program. Having parallel subjects means multiplying the work for the design, for the teacher, for the controlling bodies, ... Not something impossible, but certainly not something you want to do unless you really have to.

But then, you say "good class", and this is the problem: the reason this initiative exists is because IT IS, according to them, NOT A GOOD CLASS. It creates problem: inadapted learning curve, inequalities, early tracking of students, ... while not being intellectually very interesting.

Again: ACCORDING TO THEM. It does not matter if you don't agree with them: it is impossible for them to do a proposal where every one agrees. You are not special, and you can repeat "it's a good class", THEY HAVE A 1000 PAGES REPORT, they did not just wake up a morning and decided "it's not a good class", it's a result of a reflection that may be wrong but is certainly way more solid than yours. (just in case: it is not an "argument from authority", I'm not saying they are right, simply, painting them as if they are equivalent to a random HN commenter is just either intellectually dishonest or the proof that the person who does that is themselves really stupid)

> is it, though? That's what they say, on 1 side of the issue, but it doesn't seem like that's the case, and again, both are useful, so that's not a valid excuse for nuking 1

You realise too that if you propose to keep the 2, you will have people complaining about that, right? Some people like the color orange, some people like the color green. You may like green. Sometimes, people choose green, and you are happy. And sometimes they choose orange, but don't pretend that "green" is somehow "the good one", especially if you have nothing else than feeling and vague idea of how it works. But also, importantly, when we have the green-vs-orange, there is always an idiot who say "it's easy, let's just mix green and orange together" thinking that magically, both green and orange will be happy.

No, having both Algebra and Data Science is not "the best of two worlds". There are plenty of reason why it is very very stupid: more work, more confusion, we dont fix the early tracking of student (we increase it in fact because the uni will even less adapt to people who haven't done Algebra if they can just say "you had to choose Algebra"), we don't help diversity (Algebra will be even more non-diverse now that the "bad ones" who loves math will be pushed to do Data Science), ...