Any recommendations for how to approach K-12 math teaching? Got some (very) little ones and doing our best but both parents are definitely more humanities-brained
I think it helps to think in terms of keeping up with the demands of school without crushing their curiosity and interest. In my generation, at least where I grew up, school was less competitive and college admissions more laid back. We were at the tail end of when the people who worked on the line at Ford’s earned more than many college graduates. We had no idea what would happen next.
Today parents are freaked out because math scores are a sorting hat for college admissions and lucrative careers. Yet they don’t use math in their own careers, and many of them hate it.
My neighbor, who is a retired high school math teacher, told me that the kids who shine in advanced math are not the ones whose parents treated math as a series of competitive milestones. I started out “slow” in math, and my K-12 math grades were highly variable (to put it kindly), but eventually graduated cum laude as a math major while also becoming a fairly competent jazz musician.
My parents were both scientists, but loved the humanities. I think you can show your own interest and curiosity when talking to your kids about math, or helping them with their lessons. Rather than suggesting that you’re not “math people”, admit that it’s being taught in a new way and that you’re going to re-learn it along with them because it’s fun.
I would restructure school math if it were up to me, though I’m cautious about wholesale introduction of computers for the many reasons discussed in this thread. One idea for your kids is to explore some non-school math topics as they show an interest, such as pure logic, proofs, and computation.
The Doomsday Clock really strains credulity; I'd love to see a case for how we're closer to (as defined in this article) total nuclear annihilation or even a limited exchange than we were at any point in the cold war. The case is not convincingly made by any of the subjects in the article.
Nuclear proliferation is still something to be taken with deadly seriousness but the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences needs to cut the hyperbole and present their case more convincingly.
Absolutely true. I could certainly see an argument that we're closer now than 10 or 20 years ago. But closer than 1980? 1970? It's ludicrous to think so. It makes itself a measure that is obviously untrustworthy.
By what standard? You basically had side A and B. Now you have a dozen countries that can kick off a nuclear exchange.
There’s alot more factors now. The order we have today is really fragile. Especially as Ukraine has bared that the Russians are tiger with rotten teeth.
I think there is no real doubt that the fact is true. What you perhaps refer to is the rate of change, and I'd agree with you that the US is doing far worse in that regard.
Lived in SE Asia fora few years and my understanding is that tan skin = outdoor labor = lower caste.
My spouse is asian and I'm N Euro - I would kill to have skin that just tans no matter how much sun you get. I think I've seen her get burns twice in over a decade and we do a lot of beach time.
I love the threat of displacing billionaires out of our economy whenever taxing the wealthy comes up like the monied class aren't already incredibly sophisticated tax cheats
That firewall isn't going away anytime soon. Americans are inundated with a deluge of foreign influence campaigns from a variety of foreign powers and no way China wants that pain revisited upon themselves.
Seems like Onlyfans-like content also exists in China. They banned "erotic eating of bananas on livestreams" 1), so if they're fire-fighting, there must be a fire...
Please don't comment like this here. It's not what HN is for and it destroys what it is for. We have to ban accounts that comment like this repeatedly.
Id also argue if China was open to the world we would see the level of Chinese racism against foreigners is very high indeed. Likely higher given their closed media systems unable to tolerate foreign opinion.
It's hard to imagine what could even constitute a modern Sputnik moment, but it's an interesting thought experiment. I just don't think that Americans care enough, and both countries are way more dependent on each other than the US and USSR ever were.
Caveat I've been wrong on pretty much every political prognostication I've ever made, so buy some defense industry stocks.
Maybe US gets really good at maglev trains and in reprisal China goes full throttle on inventing teleportation/hyperdrive tech?
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