The Newsletter’s Seven-Year Anniversary

 
I don’t mean to boast, but seven years ago I sent an email to the Global Math Department board. “I was thinking,” I wrote. “We should start a newsletter to share GMD info but also to share interesting posts and articles with our members.”
 
“Question: Do you think that this is a good idea?”
 
I was thinking a lot about about GMD as an organization at the time. How would we get new people involved? I was imagining the newsletter as talent recruitment. First we’d ask you to contribute to the newsletter. Then we’d nab you when an editor stepped down. You’ve been so good with the newsletter -- would you consider serving on the board? Running for chair?
 
What I didn’t anticipate back in 2014 was that math teacher blogs would (mostly) go kaput. Those early newsletters were really blog recaps, and the GMD newsletter can’t be that any more. But something interesting has happened; the GMD newsletter has kept blogging. Each week, the GMD newsletter features what seems more and more to be mini-blog posts.
 
Math teachers are (mostly) not blogging on blogs, but they’re blogging here. I think it’s cool that the newsletter has evolved to fill this niche.
 
***
 
By the way, last week’s speaker at the Global Math Department was me. The talk was titled “Why Kids Learn from Examples (And Other Times They Don’t),” and the case I made had a lot to do with problem solving. In short, how is it that people learn from solving a problem, thinking creatively, or discovering something true? One compelling answer is, they learn from thinking really hard about the solution.
 
(What does it mean to “think really hard”? At the least, that they can explain the solution to themselves.)
 
But if people learn from thinking really hard about solutions, why can’t you do that without solving a problem first? That’s what a worked example is -- a solution that you try to learn from. In the talk I detail some of the reasons worked examples often don’t help, along with ways of dealing with these challenges.
 
Besides that talk I also wrote a book about worked examples, so if you’re eager to know more about what I think, you’ve got options.
 
***
 
There’s a lot to chew on in “Kumon In: The Recent, Rapid Rise of Private Tutoring Centers.” As documented by these researchers, the private tutoring industry in the United States has seen sustained growth over the past few decades. Most of the growth is for wealthier Americans. Why the growth? Hard to say, but the researchers note that this increased spending “mimics phenomena observed in other spheres of family life.” Richer people have been spending on things like ballet classes and shmancy childcare and seeking private schools with sculpture classes. Private tutoring -- as provided by Kumon, Mathnasium, etc. -- is just part of that quest for educational advantage.
 
Why the quest? I recently read Paul Tough’s “The Inequality Machine” and I can’t recommend it enough. There is a debate about whether wealthy students gain economically from attending elite schools. Tough reports that the correct answer is: yes, they do. Which would explain the questing.
 
The question is, what do you do about this? Tough comes down hard on the SAT, but it’s not entirely clear what the impact of eliminating tests would be on admissions. (At least admissions pro Jon Boeckenstedt thinks it would help.) (He’s still blogging!) For the majority (roughly 2/3) of kids, grades and SATs are redundant. That leaves 1/6 of kids who score better than their grades would expect, and 1/6 who have better grades than scores.
 
Do you want to guess, the kids who have better scores than grades? Are they rich or poor? Answer: they tend to be richer.
 
Educational advantage is something you can purchase, and there’s really no good way to keep people from paying for knowledge. I don’t know what to do about it, but that’s the reality.
 
 
– Michael Pershan [@mpershan]

Chat, Listen, Read, Do

 
Chat.
In an earlier GMD column, Melvin Peralta wrote about Coded Bias, and, subsequently, offered to host a type of “slowchat” using the hashtag #CodedBiasChat. The question posing has since concluded, but those who have seen (or may someday see!) the Coded Bias documentary are encouraged to chime in when/as they can:

 
Listen.
There were a few notable talks, or conferences full of talks, this past week. One of them was Michael Pershan’s GMD webinar (see: this newsletter!). Another included Nathan Alexander’s “Data and Du Bois: Futurist Frameworks for an Interdisciplinary Education,” for which you can find a linked recording:


 
There was also the #paraDIGMS2021 conference, which was co-organized by Justin Lanier and Marissa Loving. Check out e.g. Justin’s thread here, and – even if you did not participate – consider looking into the work of those who were involved (and look out for the recordings!).

 
Read.
A number of read-worthy items came out recently; here are but two: first, check out the posts by the Just Mathematics Collective and their Initiatives. For example, check out this thread on mathematicians and the NSA:

 
Or this quote-pull as tweeted by Marissa Loving (the aforementioned co-organizer of paraDIGMS):


 
Second, NCTM’s MTLT has a wonderful piece by Shraddha Shirude that I have tweeted in full for those who lack login access for this journal (and will leave up unless I received a takedown notice):


Do.
As the summer approaches (in some sense of “summer” and some sense of “approaches”) it is a great time to think about what you can do to effect change and build towards a better world in the middle third of 2021. Each of the aforementioned examples in this newsletter contribution are about more than passive participation in mathematics, education, or mathematics education; these are reflections from individuals and groups who are doing something. Note, in particular, those who work behind the scenes – including those who act in a more formal capacity (such as an AMS committee per my last GMD newsletter), those who act in a more grassroots capacity (such as the paraDIGMS organizers), and those who work behind the scenes (the astute reader will not miss that Marian Dingle’s “pushing” is shouted out by both Melvin, around the #CodedBiasChat, and Shraddha, around MTLT writing and publishing).
 
There is no shortage of work to be done:
What will you plan to do individually? What will you plan to do collectively?
 
– Benjamin Dickman [@benjamindickman]

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