I’ve taught mathematics at community colleges for over 20 years and I’m absolutely convinced that not all people can learn algebra or calculus.

It's obviously genetic, says the mathemetician.

I tried once to ask reddit's Anthropologists about what cultural artifacts are affected by genetics e.g. how lactose intolerance can affect a local culture. The question was apparently racist and then taken down.

I once asked an obvious lead in to a racist argument and was called a racist. It must be a conspiracy.

[Generic pontificating on the nature of society from the fount of the infinite wisdom of my anus] (it's multiple comment threads, and the free square on your HN bingo card)

You write web servers that need more boxes and serve less traffic than was standard 10 years ago. Why would anyone listen to you on any topic.

  • JuneFall [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Agree with you, in specific about the HN fascist:

    This belief of mine is considered heretical amongst leftist colleagues (I’m a liberal myself on almost every issue). As a college we act as if everyone can pass. Years of administration telling the math department that our passing rate is too low have led me to pretty much pass everyone who takes the final exam. Last semester 80% passed but only around 50% deserved to.

    When you get Finland with 90%+ rate of people finishing their STEM degrees, when you get applied math and science courses which do actually make people competent, when you get even slightly good results at Carnegie Mellon and VHS's in Germany then it isn't on the people you teach, but on you (and the system and the influence the system had on the people before). After you dealt with those problems we can gladly as institutions and teachers try to form councils in which the learners are experts in their own right and can learn and teach each other, till then those HN news claims are bullshit ideology and chauvinistic.

    I have yet to have listened to courses of people who claim "It is the students faults! They are just not able to grasp things" - esp. when they say 50% of the people they teach! and not have it be the fault of them sucking at what they do.

    • Beaver [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      There seems to be this common attitude that the students need to Earn their education, and that lots of failures is a sign that the Weak and Undeserving are being weeded out. It's such a weird attitude - shouldn't we be nurturing our next generation, trying to grow them into better people? Instead of pressing them against the grindstone of testing and credentializing, and then throwing them away like trash when so many of them fail.

      • LoudMuffin [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I think it's funnier that it literally makes them horny that the "undeserving" are weeded out, but once those people are shut out of society and then go and try to make a living by whatever means possible like beating and robbing the Mayos and Gusanos they go and complain

        Ah yes, I love having a society based on dispensing arbitrary cruelty based on my toddler like gut instincts and the myriad of social problems it creates. Very cool!

      • bigboopballs [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        shouldn’t we be nurturing our next generation, trying to grow them into better people? Instead of pressing them against the grindstone of testing and credentializing, and then throwing them away like trash when so many of them fail.

        yes, but capitalism selects against empathy and nurturing behavior :(

    • LoudMuffin [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      When you get Finland with 90%+ rate of people finishing their STEM degrees

      Oh well when you say that, they just say it's that Finland (which is filled with Mongols when they're not using the ethnostate line as a weap)on/Germany/etc. is an all white ethnostate and as such doesn't have to "babysit" a bunch of savages and is better able to devote resources to a group of people who are inherently smarter to begin with

      What's funny is that I've been railroaded into remedial classes meant for breeding the underclass of people working at McDonalds and there were more than a few white kids in there, so I tend to wonder what they would do about that