[foxyv]

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with American sub-culture, the US dollar, our crazy university system, and immigration. This is speculation on my part so take it with a BIG grain of salt.

The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are some of the best in the world in my opinion.

The US dollar being used as a reserve currency for most of the world means that it is the center of international investment. This means that the billions of dollars that flowed into PayPal and Elon Musk's startups probably came in large part from foreign investment funds.

Our universities crank out some of the weirdest and least conventional engineers you can imagine. Most of them are half-crazy in the first place. The archetype of Mad Scientist can be found in physics departments and engineering labs all over the country. Conformity is often seen as a kind of perversity. We idolize professors like Feynman and read novels like Ignition! This is why you see bridges collapsing and power grids failing while we build some of the most advanced technology in the world. We hate boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space.

Finally in no small part is American sub-culture. Specifically the science fantasy of space travel and colonization that is in the heart of a lot of American engineers and scientists. The same fantasy that captured the heart of Elon Musk, a billionaire South African immigrant who made his fortune in Silicon Valley. In addition there is the added fact that few other countries would allow some random small company to build ICBMs in their metaphorical backyard. The USA is kinda loose like that...

[e40]

> The USA brings in 50 million or so people from other countries. Often they are bloody minded, stone cold, hard workers that will sacrifice everything to give their children the opportunity to be Americans. These people are some of the best in the world in my opinion.

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.

[foxyv]

I've worked with a lot of people like that as well. It's always a bit awe inspiring.

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.

[asadlionpk]

Tough times make tough people. But their next generation is usually soft sadly.

[systemvoltage]

Meanwhile here in Oakland, this is what Mathematics teaching looks like in schools [PDF]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...

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

[rpmisms]

There was also a recent incident in Virginia: (Virginia Drops Advanced Math)[https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/virginia-to-drop-adv...]

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.

[908B64B197]

> because some of the struggling kids are black

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...

[rpmisms]

That's super cool, good for him. It's also an anecdotal example and relatively meaningless in the scheme of things.

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.

[908B64B197]

Come on, they are right next to a world class math department (Berkley).

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?

[specialist]

Public education is the front lines of the culture wars. I've observed many waves of reform (fads).

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.

[richk449]

I just skimmed through that document. Based on your description I was expecting a polemic. But actually about 90% of what they recommend looks like really good ways to improve math instruction.

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.

[systemvoltage]

I suggest to read the open letter (signed by more than 600 professors and professionals including 2 Nobel laureates) before you make conclusions: https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13658

[richk449]

The letter appears to be criticizing a different document: The California Mathematics Framework. That framework appears to be around a thousand pages, which I don't have time to read right now, unfortunately.

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?

[Pokepokalypse]

>We hate boring maintenance and love to launches cars into space.

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

― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

[foxyv]

Big time! The USA could use a lot more maintainers. People who want to see beautiful, well built, and carefully taken care of cities and streets. People who make sure the power is humming and pipes are clean. Unfortunately the political situation is more of a "Keep building shitty car dependent walled garden suburbs that no one can afford, except investors. Keep that up until the house of cards collapses under the weight of our poorly maintained and expensive infrastructure."

[jollybean]

Those are all good points, but the rest of the world turns out, pound for pound, Engineers that are just as good and crazy.

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.

[foxyv]

This is why I didn't just mention the engineers. It's the conflation of all those factors. Not just a single one. Crazy engineers can get a lot done with no capital, but mostly they will end up doing soul crushing Dilbert style jobs.

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.

[pr0v0cat3ur]

The US offers unlimited resources for pursuit if one is willing to venture after them with resilience. Having said that, it always comes down to passion and willingness of pursuit and this is why many with lesser means can still achieve greatness and even better in a country with the resources available.

[jollybean]

" it always comes down to passion and willingness of pursuit"

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.

[908B64B197]

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

So their bankers and politicians just can't compete.