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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32808 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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do you also agree that having a different racial makeup of these honors classes relative to baseline is a problem?

Why is this a problem? Is the disparate makeup of the school basketball team a problem? Have we measured the representation of people with attached earlobes? Are stupid people adequately represented in honors classes? “Stupid” seems like a much more salient category than race if we are seeking diversity of thought, perspective or life experience.

Even if it is a problem, is it a higher concern than the quality of the honors classes? Perhaps increasing equity cannot be done without degrading class quality to near non-honors levels, is that worth it?

It's a problem if there is a causal link to historical events in the United States, right (redlining, slavery, Jim Crow, etc)?

I think that a stupid person could be successful in an honors class, they would just need to put in more work relative to their genius classmates. The honors class might even be better for it, as the stupid person might have different perspectives on the literature during discussions (in an honors English class, for example). I could see a stupid person in a math class being disruptive though, depending on what we mean by stupid.

Perhaps increasing equity cannot be done without degrading class quality to near non-honors levels, is that worth it?

What is the optimal distribution of stupidity amongst students for learning rate in a school classroom (this is a flippant question, it just occurred to me and sounded funny)? Is the intelligence distribution of a class the most important factor for learning rate? Or is it things like class size, teacher goodness, school funding, and student social support? Maybe we should filter out kids with poor resourcing so that the well-resourced kids can learn faster?

edit: comma

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