My current theory is that we've basically gotten addicted to importing the world's smartest kids so we have been unwilling to invest in our own children.
It's also odd how no one ever asks whether the reason child care is necessary and a single-income household isn't earning enough anymore to make a living because Americans are effectively competing with the entire world for housing and jobs.
Man, the "anti-immigration" square on my HN bingo card has a hole in it from all the pen marks. Anyway, we stopped investing in kids because kids aren't profitable in the next quarter, like everything else that's beneficial to society and not the eight wealthy people currently running it.
Another way to say it might be that we've been shielded from the effects of not investing in our own children by the immigration of smart and educated young adults, where countries with less immigration are more acutely aware of how well its own educational system is performing.
> so we have been unwilling to invest in our own children.
The school districts like SFUSD are actually sabotaging the growth of our kids in the name of equity. They're committed to ideas from people like Jo Boaler, and they tried very hard to dumb down the curriculum. The real tragedy is that kids from wealthy families will just get other means of education to make up the difference. It's the kids who desperately need the quality education who are going to be left behind.
If it were up to me, I'd send those people to jail (yes yes, I know. I'm just angry and lashing out)
I looked up this lady on Wikipedia, but I couldn't find any obvious problems. It says she's a math educator with degrees from known universities and lots of published research?
Personally, I find Boaler's advocacy extreme. Her famous quote: "Every student is capable of understanding every theorem in mathematics – and beyond – the mathematics curriculum. They just need the opportunity to struggle with rich tasks and see mathematics as a conceptual, creative subject.” This sounds inspiring, but in practice she advocated the policy of truly dumbing down math curriculums and text books. To say the least, shouldn't she at least demonstrate that she could understand any theorem? But instead, she advocated that SFUSD eliminate algebra from 8th Grade . Another example was that the curriculum that she advocated, College Preparatory Mathematics, was so boring and trivial. She also said something along the line "Traditional mathematics teaching is repetitive and uninspiring. We give students 30 similar problems to do over and over again, and it bores them and turns them off math for life.” What's funny is that the alternatives that Boaler prescribed were quite uninspiring and low level: https://www.youcubed.org/tasks/. All I can derive from her policies and complaints is that she couldn't do math. Why people would listen to someone who sucked at math about math education is beyond me.
One state offering something is a start but we're still far behind maternity, pre-k, childhood nutrition, and primary or secondary education in general for most of the population relative to peer nations. Plus this administration's cuts to Medicare or SNAP which will also hit the poorest kids the most. Plus the national debt they are saddled with.
Our children's well being (physical health, mental health, education, etc) is routinely ranked toward the absolute bottom compared peer nations.
Definitely one of the few policies that Trump "championed" that I supported him on; severely curtailing H1B visas going forward. Those who are here can be grandfathered in, but going forward the program should be wound down, and we invest in our own civilians and youth.
