California Education Dept. Considering Program to Fight Supposed Racism in Math
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so”
This looks like the same program that has been pushed in Oregon. How is this even taken seriously?
FOX News reports:
California promotes ‘dismantling racism in mathematics’ guidance in draft for statewide framework
A California-based group is sounding the alarm as the state education department considers implementing a framework that promotes controversial ideas about race and mathematics.
The “Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” caught attention in February when Fox News reported on Oregon defending the program, which advises, among other things, that the focus on finding the right answer is an example of White supremacy infiltrating classrooms.
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so,” a document for the “Equitable Math” toolkit reads. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
Educators for Quality and Equality co-founder Lori Meyers told Fox News on Tuesday: “With California schools consistently performing below average in math on both the CAASP [California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress] assessment and on our Nation’s Report Card, it’s especially important that the State Board of Education provide us educators with resources that contain research-based best practices for improving outcomes, and reject resources that demean teachers and single out one race for blame.”
“We ask that the state provide us with a mathematics framework that reflects sound, research-based practices over political ideology,” she added.
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Comments
“Prove 2+2=5. Show your work.”
This here is part of the work.
Fun fact: within my lifetime, California schools were – consisently – ranked among the top five in the nation.
Maybe schools just need a different incentives plan. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YePRy8KWC4A
Problem: Kids in the state are performing poorly on math exams?
Solution: No such thing as wrong answers, so everyone passes. Yay!
Not sure how this passes as “progress”.
This is a way to ensure that especially URM kids NEVER learn math.
Now what do we do? In my school district we’re being asked to “acknowledge that (the way we do things now) is designed to hold back [black] and brown students” and I said no I cannot acknowledge that which is not true.
But if we were using this woke garbage math instruction, I would have to acknowledge that, yes, it’s designed to ensure that kids with natural talent and/or tiger parents are the only ones who learn math.
Translation: Minority kids are doing poorly in math, and our teachers’ union doesn’t want their incompetence to reflect poorly on the incompetent teachers. So they need to dumb down math, by only studying “minority math,” which doesn’t have just one right answer. Feelings are more important than numbers, after all.
I don’t understand why minority parents don’t fight this movement. After all, it’s predicated on the assumption that minority kids are too stupid to learn real math. That assumption is racist and demeaning, and forever scars minority kids with feelings of inferiority.
I’d like to see everyone who wants to have input to this at the California Education Department be required to take a rigorous exam in math. With the score of each being publicly available.
This wouldn’t include higher math: just the sort of math that’s covered (or should be covered) in high school, and which one would hope all competent adults to handle.
There would at least be some entertainment value in watching those who lack these basic skills (and presumably either lack interest in acquiring them or lack the capacity to do so) explain why they’re qualified to determine that such skills, skills they do not themselves possess, are therefore not merely useless but actually evil.
> The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally
> false, and teaching it is even much less so
So I suppose the Rhind Papyrus, dated to about 1000 years before Romulus was nursed by the wolf, written by some Egyptian white supremacist; it shows examples of how to obtain the correct answer.
(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhind_Mathematical_Papyrus)
The first time I saw a debate about how witch-doctor ritual is just as valid as quantum physics, the “need” to decolonialize science – and the pro-science was cowed into apologizing, I knew they’d be coming for Math. Check out this 4-year-old clip at https://youtu.be/C9SiRNibD14
Watch and cringe.