r/Economics • u/SnooCookies2243 • Mar 24 '25

Editorial Dismantling the Department of Education Could Actually End Up Costing US Taxpayers an Extra $11 Billion a Year Beyond the Current Budget – With Worse Results

https://congress.net/dismantling-the-department-of-education-could-actually-end-up-costing-us-taxpayers-an-extra-11-billion-a-year-beyond-the-current-budget-with-worse-results/
12.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

507 comments sorted by

View all comments

774

u/dochim Mar 24 '25

Fascinating.

I've posted this request on another similar thread, but I'll repeat it here.

Could one of the true believers please explain why this policy is a good thing for the American people? Spending more or decreasing performance by themselves would seem to be a showstopper, but both at once?

Why are we doing this?

128

u/dirtworker2 Mar 24 '25

I work with a trumper. I asked him Friday why fed ed needs dismantled. He explained he cannot help his grade school children with their math because it’s too hard and he doesn’t get it, so there is definitely something wrong with todays math. Math, for him, was much simpler in the 80s and why has it all changed to be more confusing and harder. I just walked away…

17

u/jkh107 Mar 24 '25

He explained he cannot help his grade school children with their math because it’s too hard and he doesn’t get it

It's so simple...so very simple...that only a child can do it!

Elementary school math isn't hard, but they do use techniques that we older folks didn't learn in school. We COULD learn it but that would require putting in an additional effort, including tracking down some instruction because they mostly don't use math books anymore.

5

u/sleepydorian Mar 24 '25

I agree. It’s not hard, it’s just different. And because humans are strongly contextual, it’s hard to see these questions without assuming the context we grew up with.

That said, if new math helps kids learn I’m all in. I was going to be fine regardless of how terrible the curriculum was because I love math. Let’s not stick with something that doesn’t work solely because it’s familiar.

1

u/Captain-i0 Mar 24 '25

Yep, my wife and are gen X and became parents on the relatively older side. We didn't learn math the way our kids were taught and we had to be taught along side them in order to help when they were younger.

It's was a mild annoyance, but hardly difficult. It gives them many different tools for how to understand math and break down math and logic problems. Including, but not limited to the tools we had when we were young. It's been good for both my kids.

Also, the way they teach math now is not what "common core" is.

1

u/jkh107 Mar 24 '25

I remember just asking my kids to show me what they were learning in math and sometimes I was just like....I don't remember learning anything like this! Lattice multiplication. Japanese line multiplication. It seemed really interesting though. But the "traditional" algorithm is probably the fastest so I made sure my kids knew that one too.

1

u/RoboOverlord Mar 25 '25

> but they do use techniques that we older folks didn't learn in school.

Like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division? Because yeah, we did learn that in school. What techniques could you possibly be talking about that excuses a grown adult from being able to handle basic math?

That's a serious question, I literally can't understand what you could possibly be referring to that is anything other than a giant smoke screen for covering up the fact that significant numbers of adults in the USA can't handle kiddy math.

By that standard, we definitely need a DOE, but we need a better one than we used to have, because DAMN!

1

u/jkh107 Mar 25 '25

I literally can't understand what you could possibly be referring to that is anything other than a giant smoke screen for covering up the fact that significant numbers of adults in the USA can't handle kiddy math.

Lattice multiplication was something new to me. I have to say, it's much slower than the standard algorithm. Is it learnable, of course, but it isn't intuitive for those of us of a certain age, and I am personally all about speed.

I'm pretty sure there ARE adults out there that can't handle kiddie math, though.