Tim May wrote...
First, please stop including the full text of the message you are replying to. Learn to use an editor, whether you ultimately top-post or bottom-post to edited fragments.
I actually do this for a reason. If I'm not doing a line-by-line response (or sometimes even if I am), I want the original post from which I am excerpting to be visible, so that it can be referred to and determined I am not taking this particular quote out of context.
So if a kid in high school can't see the "benefit" of studying math, he shouldn't be. It's as simple as that.
Well, part of me doesn't entirely disagree. At least, high school teachers should be teaching and not babysitting. I actually consider it hard enough to develop true competence in math or science (enough to teach on the HS level), and then even harder developing the skills necessary to communicate the ideas effectively. A math or physics teacher can't be an effective babysitter, pal, AND guidance counselor. Or at least, not in the kinds of quantities liberals imagine the schools should be filled with.
On the other hand, given the current state of world education in math and science, by 9th grade it's not necessarily too late for a kid to turn into a good mathematician (actually, I myself am an example: in 9th grade I was in a lame but famous private school pulling down low Bs and high Cs in math because I was bored. By 12th grade I was in what was and is regarded as THE top-notch school for math and science in the country, pulling down 100 in calculus...but don't get me wrong, I still know the difference between me and true genius in mathematics).
However, the fact is that the school system sucks. It's a joke. Repeat offenders get bounced from school to school, wrecking classes and the environment everywhere they go. Teachers in most states have 25 classroom hours a week, a number matched nowhere in the world (as far as I've ever heard), and THAT'S in addition to homeroom and other duties. The cirriculum is a silly joke, watered down and watered down so that only someone who never shows up couldn't graduate. (And in black schools you'd be suprised how many times I've heard 'these kids can't learn...don't try'.)
So your whole "burnoff of the eaters" theme misses one critical element: direct contact with kids. If you yourself had seen and met kids you KNEW might actually have quite a talent for math, YES EVEN YOU might be tempted to give a crap, and see if just one or two might somehow be inspiried merely to do some homework. This is particularly true when you realize that you actually LIKE some of these kids, which are as fully human as you are, by the way.
Or, it might just make you even angrier...give your rage some real, practical real-world "fuel" rather than being the theoretical cloistered construct it at least appears to be. At least, 'talent' doesn't seem to be the problem. Inner-city black kids have proven that they can do extremely well in whatever they view as important (I'd argue that some of this is due to genetic superiority)...a well-run school system could easily produce the kind of math and engineering talent needed without brain-draining from other countries (and which is probably not a relaible long-term option).
The parallel I like is one we developed (in Ted Kaehler's nanotechnology study group in the early 90s) for looking at what a society and economy might look like where the costs of material production are as close to zero as one might imagine. That is, a society with full-blown general assemblers, i.e., von Neumann replicators at the molecular, mechano-synthesis, Drexler-type scale. How would goods be produced and sold? How would markets exist/
I don't remember reading any von Neumann where he discusses the idea of "general assemblers"....I'm still not convinced the general physics of that idea works out, and I believe Freeman Dyson has had some similar doubts. But despite that there's a point here...
* Namely, Hollywood. Film stock is essentially free...bits even more so. Cameras remain expensive, but are vastly less so than they were a decade ago. Basically, everything material in Hollywood is nearly free. What is expensive is the creative talent, the know-how, the ensembles of actors and directors and writers and all.
Hell, you don't have to go that far. Food is already cheap enough that we might regard it as being nearly free. I mean, for a couple of bucks you can buy enough beef to stuff a welfare family of five, and to feed a rural Chinese family for a friggin' week. (Well, at least in the US...) People from mainland China would still regard most welfare families as "rich" by Chinese standards.
* The society we are heading towards is one of an increasingly sharp division between the "skilled and in demand" end of the spectrum and the bulk of droids who have few skills in demand.
I've also witnessed this trend, but I currently believe it only holds in certain segments. There are various "craft" industries (as I call them) where this equation seems to be held in suspension. Like it or not, hip hop is one of those, though I suppose you could argue that the number of hip-hop 'artists' that make it is tiny compared to the audience. But the point is that in a craft industry, we're really referring to specific and local tastes, as opposed to Darwinian selection (ie, the 'most fit'). In a craft there may be room for many to contribute. (Other examples of craft industries are US high-end audio, the wine industry, high-end marijuana, organic foods and cheeses, and the current German-centered board game renassaiance.) What's desired in such an envornment is not necessarily the best/fastest/brightest, but something with a particularly 'quality' that corresponds to local vagaries of culture and taste. (At least, there's no other way to explain the success of "Snoop Doggy Dog"...)
(I argued this, circa 1991-2, to a bunch of people who basically bought the line that technology would bring wealth to the masses, blah blah. I argued that yes, the masses would have great material goods, just as the masses today have color tvs in their cribs. But the big money would elude them. Libertarian rhetoric about everybody being wealthy is only meaningful in the sense that even the poorest today are wealthy by Roman or Middle Ages or even Renaissance standards. But the split between those with talents in demand--the Peter Jacksons, the Stephen Kings, the Tim Berners-Lees, etc. and the "reading be for whitey" and "I don't see any benefit to studying math" vast bulk will widen.)
Much more could be said on this. I recall I wrote some long articles along these lines in the early years of the list.
This is certainly possible. On the other hand, depending on how technology unfolds we might all of a sudden find ourselves caught short and looking for talent. And certainly, the have-nots will actually have more and more as time goes on, though perhaps not much land or space.
In conclusion, your Bedford-Stuy student who doesn't see the point to studying math will never be a math researcher, or a physicist, or a chemist, or anything else of that sort. So no point in trying to convince him to study his math.
It's like convincing a kid to start writing so he'll stand a chance of being the next Stephen King: if he needs convincing, he won't be.
The burnoff of useless eaters will be glorious.
Well, if they have access to general assemblers they'll be with us forever. And such a burnoff won't be glorious, it'll be a fuckin' shame.
-TD
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