Ontario: Math Is “Subjective” And “Used to Normalize Racism and Marginalization of Non-Eurocentric Mathematical Knowledges”
Ontario Grade 9 curriculum: “a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions.”
A new curriculum in Ontario, Canada is seeking to ‘decolonialize’ math and will teach that the subject is subjective. This is just the latest example of the left’s attempt to inject social justice into a subject that should never be politicized.
It’s not only crazy, it’s completely unfair to the students.
The Toronto Sun reports:
Ontario’s new Grade 9 curriculum preaches ‘subjective’ nature of mathematics
It’s apparently about more than just the numbers.
Changes to Ontario’s math curriculum announced last year by Education Minister Stephen Lecce will include a ‘subjective’ and ‘decolonial’ approach to mathematics, according to documents posted on the ministry’s website.
“Mathematics is often positioned as an objective and pure discipline,” reads a section of an online brief highlighting the ‘vision and goals’ of the updated curriculum.
“However, the content and the context in which it is taught, the mathematicians who are celebrated, and the importance that is placed upon mathematics by society are subjective.”
Math, it continues, has been “used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges,” and explains that taking a “decolonial” and “anti-racist approach” to teaching math will outline its “historical roots and social constructions” to students.
“The Ontario Grade 9 mathematics curriculum emphasizes the need to recognize and challenge systems of power and privilege, both inside and outside the classroom, in order to eliminate systemic barriers and to serve students belonging to groups that have been historically disadvantaged and underserved in mathematics education,” the brief continues.
Are parents in Ontario really going to accept this?
Ontario's new math curriculum looks informative and rigorous!https://t.co/709EZiT1ta pic.twitter.com/ofrSCVsj1U
— James Lindsay, getting one billion moms (@ConceptualJames) July 10, 2021
This is the official curriculum text James Lindsay is displaying in that tweet:
Mathematics is often positioned as an objective and pure discipline. However, the content and the context in which it is taught, the mathematicians who are celebrated, and the importance that is placed upon mathematics by society are subjective. Mathematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions. The Ontario Grade 9 mathematics curriculum emphasizes the need to recognize and challenge systems of power and privilege, both inside and outside the classroom, in order to eliminate systemic barriers and to serve students belonging to groups that have been historically disadvantaged and underserved in mathematics education.
As an engineer with a masters in finance, be assured this is doing a disservice to future generations who will need to compete with skills in the borderless Information Age. Grade 9 students simply need to establish confidence in basic math skills. Math is not a social science.
— Paul Relf (@Paul_Relf) July 10, 2021
Canada is increasingly the model for progressive authoritarianism. And for getting rid of math. https://t.co/Y8vn5XU1Il
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 10, 2021
What’s next? Social justice in nuclear fission?
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Comments
Never mind the idiocy is taking a
Position that math itself is not objective because math being objective is self-evident. What I want to know is what does “decolonizing math” look like?
Are these idiots actually trying to push that math is derived from colonial imperialism?
Decolonize and it’s ugly twin sister “hegemony” are buzzwords used by those who want to tear everything down so they can take power.
This is what it looks like https://www.participatorymethods.org/resource/toward-liberatory-mathematics-paulo-freires-epistemology-and-ethnomathematics and math simply becomes another means to create the desired ‘critical consciousness’ in the students. That is a global link.
This one https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/spring-2021/mathematics-in-context-the-pedagogy-of-liberation is from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)’s now renamed Teaching Tolerance. For the record, SPLC has worked closely with the NEA for years.
As an elementary teacher with a passion for math and an assistant professor of education who specializes, in part, in math education, our paths have crossed because we both believe in the humanizing power of mathematics. Engaging in mathematics education with a humanizing love can allow students to see themselves as complex human beings who are affected by institutionalized racism but not defined by it. As educators, mothers and organizers of color, we make this argument out of radical love for our students and the education community.
In Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, Paulo Freire describes radical love as an “armed love.” In Women, Culture & Politics, Angela Davis argues that radical means “grasping at the root.” In this spirit, we invite you to consider how education, specifically mathematics education, has harmed students and, importantly, how it can also repair that harm. We believe in the power of mathematics to quantify the past and present and to also serve as a tool for liberation.
And that’s just the Intro. Chapter 3 of my book covers the so-called Math Wars and explains that Constructivism was never actually about how to best teach math or science (or reading for that matter). It is to prevent the highly rational Axemaker Mind that is an impediment to the kind of manipulations Freire, or Angela Davis, have in mind with altering students’ subjective consciousness through classroom and other planned experiences.
This is some of the stupidest pabulum I have ever read. We must destroy the schools of education. They seem to be positively harmful to the goal of education. Only people with no common sense or real world experience could come up with something like this. Even communist know they need accurate math skills to keep an accurate tally of all the people they murder.
Since you brought up the schools of education, look at what was in the same issue. https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/spring-2021/a-flaw-in-the-foundation
It was gratifying, Blanding said, to unpack critical race theory and racial consciousness as future Black teachers and school leaders. Damian Williams, a fourth-year teacher and graduate of Clemson University’s Call Me MiSTER program, agreed. He attributed two courses led by Black instructors with his introduction to culturally relevant pedagogy.
“As the sole Black male in my classes,” Williams explained, “it made me so comfortable to see professors who looked like me be intentional about their approach to preparing us to be great teachers for all students.” Williams said it was in those courses that he first grasped a philosophical outlook for teaching.
Dr. Kristen Duncan, assistant professor of education at Clemson, believes a more holistic view of race in education is critical to better equip anti-racist future educators. “Teacher education programs should weave the thread of race throughout the entire program, to where race is discussed in every single aspect [of the work],” she explained.
CRT is the tip of the iceberg for what is planned. It is salient for so many, which makes it the vessel for the desired ‘critical consciousness.”
The principal trait of such writings is that the object can be replaced with anything: “As an elementary teacher with a passion for XYZ and an assistant professor of education who specializes, in part, in XYZ education, our paths have crossed because we both believe in the humanizing power of XYZ.” and so on and on
There’s nothing properly compelling in it, no falsifiable argument, no insight based on the actual field being discussed – only moralistic blackmail. Really the stuff of spoiled children.
When I was researching Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon, one of the schools of education in the state was shifting to the constructivism in math approach and the ed professors were balking because they recognized that math is useful to know. The Dean of the ed school recommended the balkers be replaced by professors from the sociology department who would be perfectly willing to replace the math focus to something that was more about getting at individual consciousness in what the student internalizes.
The other fascinating aspect was the entire shift away from traditional math had been financed by almost $100 million in grants from the behavioral sciences division of the National Science Foundation. The amounts that bound all the schools in the state had been paid partially to the state university system itself, some to the State Department of Education, and then a couple ‘piloting’ school districts.
There was institutional money available for pushing these bad ideas and boy, did they always have their conventions at the finest hotels and resorts. Quite the boondoggle.
“what does “decolonizing math” look like?”
It looks like morons. I didn’t think that my opinion of school administrators could drop, this proves how wrong I was.
Decolonizing math: Arabs are supremely important because they invented “zero.” Geometry was invented by Egyptian pyramid builders, not Greeks. Newton was an imperialist wanker.
If math was a Western concept, the Communist Chinese would ban it from their schools.
“non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges”
Exists in the same universe as dry water and left-handed sky hooks.
I think their real issue is that people like Newton or Lorenz were European – which means that they are made of pure evil. They also likely object to the Pythagorean theorem being named after the Pythagoreans because they claim all math and science came from sub-saharan African tribes whose incredible creativity was stolen by the evil Europeans.
Apparently Europeans are actually cave beasts created by the evil scientist Yakub in order to punish the melanated people of the world. They apparently had star ships and a multi-star civilization until the evil whites were created and used to curse the people.
You think this is absurd – but it will be taught as science to your grandchildren.
In my industry ” Accounting and taxation/ CPA/finance etc”
Getting 90% correct in college got the student an “A”
However in the real world getting a 5% error rate which equals 95% correct will actually get you fired.
I am sure it is similar with other sciences and engineering,
African parents would be infuriated. For several generations African children in former British colonies have sat exams, originally the Cambridge Exams, now locally administered and formulated on the original standards from Oxbridge. They are proud to compete with all those throughout the former Empire, and aquit themselves well. This is racism, to tell children they are not smart enough to do real math.
When something does not make sense, like this policy, perhaps we are applying the wrong agenda. Focus on the substance/logic, and you will miss the plan. The capability to reason logically (math) and communicate are fundamental and the deep state knows it. This is not about their ignorance. This is what evil looks like.
Ignorance and illiteracy was the law for slaves. It is now the policy of the public education establishment. I wonder why the alignment? Who could possibly gain? And, who will lose/pay the price?
I am confused. Proofs are a thing. Are we being presented with the idea that counting discreet objects is subjective?
Keep in mind that the people who promote this babble don’t care in the slightest that it makes no sense. They aren’t trying to win a debate. They’re just trying to condition children to listen to them, not to someone else.
True, this is an assault on logic, common sense and western civilization. Those who promote this crap want chaos and disorder. Trying to counter their agenda with reason means nothing because reason means nothing to them.
They are at war with us. People have to realize – this is just another stage in the cold war.
The last to realize they are at war – usually are the losers. Better wake up !
True dat. This is a classic cognitive technique of coercive persuasion, popularly known as brainwashing. This is commonly associated with totalitarian states and cults, although I don’t see why it’s necessary to distinguish as totalitarian states are synonymous with cults of personality revolving around the leader or leadership group. This is based on the denigrating critical thinking. The cult members, after their ability to resist has been sufficiently destroyed by social-environmental control techniques Ihey! who’s up for eternal lockdowns; you, know, like in prisons) and emotional techniques (motivations are emotionally based), are told that they do not have the ability to perceive reality on their own. Or even better, no such thing as objective reality exists. This is why they’ve seized on exploiting the mentally ill who have gender identity disorder. In addition to black studies and wymyn’s studies we have queer studies. Queer is mostly used in that branch of CRT/SJW evil as a verb, as in queering education. Biology doesn’t exist, gender doesn’t exist, genitals don’t exist, human nature doesn’t exist, nature itself doesn’t exist. Everything is just a social construct.
With sufficient force, or coercion people can be forced to become something different than human. In fact, get ready for ready for the new propaganda neologism; “species being.”
According to CRT “expert” Angela Harris the very idea of a “species being” is an ideological concept. Apparently the very category of “species” is a product of white supremacy and capitalism. Or something.
Who is Angela Harris?
https://law.ucdavis.edu/faculty/harris/
The babble isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. It’s meant to confuse, be resistant to response (because the proponents reject logic and accept the illogical, making them resistant to concession), and to destabilize institutions of society (including education, religion, and government & law). Acceptance of (or, at least, a failure to resist) the babble erodes resistance to more, and more outrageous, babble, further eroding society and its institutions.
“They’re just trying to condition children to listen to them, not to someone else.”
Check out the Loudon County Teacher Training materials sent around today by FightForSchools.com.
Check out #5 in particular: “Teachers have a special role to… inculcate morals. The teacher is the second mother. Parents’ role is to socialize children and respect teachers’ authority.”
In other comment sections we’ve discussed the Smithsonian chart on “white culture” with special attention to the typical reaction, “so what part of this is wrong, and what do other cultures do instead?”
This chart finally tells us what they don’t like. White culture is all about individualism and freedom. But “Color Group Collectivism”… well, let’s just say you can paraphrase #3 through #5 as:
#3: Be a good slave to others and shut up.
#4: Be a good communist and don’t own anything.
#5: Be a good, obedient subject of your local Political Officers. And shut up.
I hate to say it, but the opinion in this chart is that the heart of “colored” culture is being an obedient communist slave, because only whites place any value on independence and freedom. I’m just amazed these white liberals let the cat out of the bag.
My lived experience establishes that you are a racist. And don’t ask for logical proof of my claim. Resort to eurocentric ideas of logic would simply further establish your racism.
It would mean you skip the camps and head straight into the chambers.
Unfortunately, nobody can do math or chemistry any longer, so the chambers are fresh out of Zyklon-B. There’s no rope because the factories that made it no longer operate. We’d use meat hooks, but metallurgy was rejected as “racist” and we can no longer process ores. Sorry, mate, manual strangulation is all we can offer.
I know — we can drown you in Brawndo!
When I took geometry as a freshman in high school, it was “proof geometry” where you had to learn the theorems and apply them to reach the conclusion in the problem. It was tough sledding learning to think that way, but once you got the hang of it it was fun, like solving a puzzle. I don’t know when it changed, but the average geometry class is no longer like that.
Now, even underclassmen at the college level can barely present a valid logical argument…hell, too many can’t even handle plug-n-chug straightforward problems, at least among non-majors. I think it’s the result of deliberate, systemic denigration and destruction of logical thought in modern so-called education.
Classical education recognized three stages of intellectual development in children: the grammar stage, where children focused on learning facts; the logic stage, where children learned how to evaluate arguments based on the facts they had learned; and the rhetoric stage, where they learned to formulate persuasive arguments based on their education in the previous two stages. Now, we have NONE of that in our educational system: facts are denigrated (“just Google it” – memorization is labeled “drill and kill”), logic is twisted beyond recognition, and rhetoric consists almost exclusively of emotional appeals and other logical fallacies.
Little wonder the homeschooling movement is growing by leaps and bounds. The “covid” farce has helped to tear off the ugly mask of the current state of American education.
Math skills have been intentionally degraded in the search for equal outcomes.
I think we have the face the fact that most people can’t ever move beyond rudimentary algebra/geometry and work to encourage and focus intense efforts on kids who can.
We try to teach too many irrelevant topics to too many people rather than intensely educating the top students.
Classifying skills at a “rudimentary algebra” level is being generous. We have college students who not only freak out over fractions (something I learned in THIRD GRADE, for God’s sake), they can’t even balance a checkbook/reconcile a bank statement.
True. I have a hard time teaching titration curves and what they mean because mathematical reasoning isn’t as practiced as it should be.
Lower grades don’t teach math skills or how to think mathematically. They teach how to get a good test score so the teacher can keep their job. My school has fantastic math scores, but I’ll be damned if that shows up in chemistry.
Fractions? They can’t even make f*g CHANGE without the csh register telling them how much.
Once you’ve declared that favoring objective standards over “different ways of knowing” is White Supremacist, demanding objective evidence to support an argument (any argument) can only be regarded as racist.
It sorta makes sense if you think of this as a sort of verbal board game that implements an extended form of Kafkatrap (wherein any objection to an accusation of guilt can only be taken as further evidence of guilt). In these self-referential verbal universes, any attempt to dispute the dogma-du-jour can only be evidence that the dogma therefore must be true. Think of it as a verbal Mobius-strip, a construct that can have only one side.
These contorted verbal games may seem puerile to an outsider but to the true-believer they are all the proof anyone could ever want. For (among other phenomena) the state of much academic discourse has become so debased that many “scholars” can no longer see even the most obvious and inherent logical fallacies imbedded in what is little more than a “whatever you say, I’m right (by definition)!” argument.
It is racist to think that anything a black person thinks is wrong unless that black person has been marked as no longer in the community. There are no proofs for that – so proofs are racism. Its like you Europeans don’t understand simple logic.
Can any of these imbeciles explain how math has been used, in any context whatsoever, “to normalize racism or marginalization of non-European mathematical knowledges”? Does 2+2 have answers other than “4” in non-European cultures? Can these race-obsessed morons explain their position using any facts at all?
And why do I have increasingly frequent fantasies of burying a hatchet into these leftists’ skulls?
Well, certain minorities average MUCH lower on math exams. Racism.
Also, real data is often used to deny the meaningfulness of the lived experience of racism and therefore math is racist.
Can any of these imbeciles explain how math has been used, in any context whatsoever, “to normalize racism or marginalization of non-European mathematical knowledges”?
The numbers “52” and “13” spring to mind.
But….Ancient Mesoptamia was in southeast Asia…and they invented the abacus. A tool for math calculations. How is that European?
Asians inventing the abacus is not surprising, overall they are somewhat smarter than Caucasians. That is their sin, they are too smart, dullards find that intolerable.
How is that European? Let me introduce you to another propaganda neologism: “multi-racial whiteness.”
Anyone who believes they have the right to be judged as an individual and not by their assigned identity has been tricked by the “white supremacist lie.” Who knew MLK Jr. was a white supremacist?
Anyone who isn’t white but believes that hard work, getting the right answer, critical thinking, and individual merit matters are also exhibiting multi-racial whiteness. In classical Marxist terms, these people haven’t developed their proper class consciousness. They have also succumbed to the white supremacist lie.
The ancient Mesopotamians were simply ahead of their times when it came to succumbing to the white supremacist lie.
Mesopotamia is not in Southeast Asia. It’s in the Middle East, now known by the ideologically sound name of Western Asia.
Of course 2 + 2 can equal something other than 4. In progressive math, 2 + 2 = systemic racism!
“Can any of these imbeciles explain how math has been used, in any context whatsoever, “to normalize racism or marginalization of non-European mathematical knowledges”?”
Yes they can. Here it goes. 1 + 1 equals “You’re a racist.”
See how easy that was?
In subsaharan number systems – integers above 10 are just considered “many” so obviously anyone asserting an infinite number line or the idea of imaginary numbers, negative numbers, etc — are all racists.
“Does 2+2 have answers other than “4” in non-European cultures?”
Ironically, it is mostly in the European cultures where we find the warped ones where 2+2 is officially 5.
Math is nothing more than another language. Once you understand that and get the basic rules then it is nothing to learn. My daughter struggled with math all through school, she has dyslexia. But she persevered, now she handles a billion dollar account for one of the major department stores, online, thus she is actually saving them.
Passing math tests relies on “whiteness”. Thus, failure to pass a test infers racism was used against the testee. The tests have embedded dog whistles that give colonialists the answer. Tests are exclusionary for POC. In the immortal words of Mattel’s Barbie..” math is hard”..
Short this clown $500 in his paycheck and he’ll be singing a different tune! Phony academics.
No, he’d sing the exact same tune: “Racist!!!”
If Math is euro centric why do Asians get top marks?
Average IQ 105
Some have a average IQ of 108.
Don’t you know that asking question is racist?
Different allele frequency of positive variants of mono-amine oxidase-a?
Because they reverse-engineer everything Euros invent, then make it for cheaper. This is why all the answers in Asian math are 20-30% lower than in Euro math.
This just doesn’t add up. I’m all for marginalizing mathematical ignorances of any stripe. It wouldn’t take too many blunders of this size to make a dozen!
Only 12. Ten in metric countries.
In other words, there won’t be much actual learning of math going on. Problem is that with common core there are plenty of them who will reach grade 9 and this new curriculum with a limited grasp of the fundamentals.
And Ontario supposedly has a conservative government (well, this is the Canadian definition of conservative).
“And Ontario supposedly has a conservative government (well, this is the Canadian definition of conservative).”
slightly less progressive than the other bunch of progressives
That’s the point, they don’t want you to learn math.
If we thought the right way, this would be an opportunity, not a tragedy.
Think of all the movies where the plot is that selected kids go to “special schools” to become communist sleeper agents, or Hitler Youth, or members of the League of Assassins, or magical … OK, not Hogwarts, but all those others.
Now, consider that we can give our kids the same sort of advantage — not by constructing campuses in ‘Eth Alth’eban, or on the far side of the moon, but simply by recreating the environment and curriculum existing at P.S. 54 in 1960, in our local communities, as private institutions.
“They” want to dumb “their” schools down? Fine. Our kids can grow up to eat their lunches.
So no more use of statistical models that purport to show ‘disparate impacts’? That would be refreshing.
No no – those impacts will still be put out by high priestxess of their new woke order – its just that no one will be allowed to check their figures or review their math because that is racism.
Does anyone remember when a multi-billion-dollar Mars probe crashed? It was just this thinking that wasted all those resourses.
This just doesn’t add up
To think. Just last years black supremacists, one of which heads the DOJ civil rights division, were claiming blacks invented math and geometry. Now they can’t add or subtract, apparently.
Don’t forget – they taught Europeans how to bathe. Thats the big one they love to chuckle about.
Did anybody ever claim credit for teaching us not to pee in our hallways and lobbies?
Guess the next number: 1 2 4 8 16 _.
Obviously the first letters of a Kentish proverb, Alien Birds Do Have Peculiar, the next word being Feathers, which, written with the alphabet end-around with a=27, gives 32. Thus 1 2 4 8 16 32.
That is pretty obviously cultural .
Or you could fit a minimal polynomial to the given numbers and evaluate it for the missing term and you get 31.
It’s pretty arbitrary, but the latter method at least is recommended as more general and automatic. Thus 1 2 4 8 16 31.
See Carl E. Linderholm _Mathematics Made Difficult_
Numbers above 5 are considered “many” therefore this is racism.
Interesting. My black African wife earned her four-year undergraduate degree in mathematics. In her junior and senior-level math classes she was the only black female. She was often the top student, earning mostly As and a few Bs. How did that happen, considering the fact that she was born and grew up in Africa, and English is her THIRD language?
Maybe she is one of those “Oreos” (black on the outside, white on the inside) the antiracists talk about when someone like my wife does not fit the rigid categories they have laid out. Or maybe the antiracists are just full of sh*t.
“…considering the fact that she was born and grew up in Africa…”
There’s your answer. I have found that African blacks are MUCH different from American blacks. As a matter of fact, more than a few are very disdainful of the black community here in America.
Your wife, in my opinion, simply didn’t let her skin color define her life. She wanted to study math…she studied math with great success. Well done to her!
Africans raised in Africa are very different than Afro Americans.
By almost any measure, intelligence, ambition, educational attainment, life results etc etc, they are clearly ahead of Afro Americans. This is for reasons that I won’t go into here but it’s well documented.
BTW, congratulations to your wife who seems a great person.
Low average IQ of a group does not mean they will not produce higher intelligence in some people. I does mean that the probability of that will be lower.
That notion is an unapproved opinion, comrade. Please report to your nearest re-education center.
That opinion is based on hard numbers, I think that in order to help people attain their potential, we have to understand both individual and group statistics’.
Leftists are just stone cold racists. So yes, your wife is an Oreo just like Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Being black in America isn’t a matter of skin color but indoctrination. To be authentically black in America is to think what the cult indoctrinators formerly know as educators have coerced blacks to think. Or, as Joe Biden put it when a black radio show was pressing him on issues and how he was different from Trump back during the campaign, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
Being black in America means “knowing your place.” Racist leftists said that in 1921 when their paramilitary violent enforcement wing was the KKK. Racist leftists are saying that in 2021 when their violent enforcement wing is Antifa/#BLM.
Enjoy this link to a video of a white leftist moron (but I repeat myself) lecturing that he’s more black on the inside than Dr. Stella Immanuel, an immigrant from Cameroon who came to America and achieved her dream of becoming a medical doctor (i.e. a real doctor unlike “Dr. Jill” Biden). Enjoy the compound stupidity:
https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1288181339594858498
He’s right in a way. You can’t be black in America unless your mind has been poisoned by the leftist cult. He demonstrates his mind has been poisoned.
May your wife never “know her place” that the left demands she take.
The link is down. The video has apparently been scrubbed. Here’s another link where you can read the exchange. But the embedded video no longer works.
How Bolshevik of our esteemed social media cartels to airbrush history like this.
https://eurweb.com/2020/07/29/white-blm-protester-screams-at-dr-stella-immanuel-im-more-black-than-you-on-the-inside-watch/
Actual Africans have not been mindfucked by Democrats or Western Leftists in general in many cases. Now – though – the entire anglosphere is under attack by these lunatics.
There is a great deal of irony in the fact that the core of mathematics and geometry were formulated on the African continent by Greeks, and that the concept of a numerical “zero” imported from India. Formulaic algebra was likewise first written in the near East, again by Babylonians, Egyptians and very important contributions by Greeks of non-numerical symbols to denote formulae,
Add to that the Base 60 used in architecture noted on a clay tablet from 1800 BC. Alas…. everyone you mentioned are “Indo-European”… so they will get all upset about that. Math is not a recent construct. Think “New Math” and “Whole Language” fiascos as attempts to shortcut mastering math and language.. and abject failures.
Having been born in 1956, I was subjected to “new math” in elementary school. Although I went on to five years of college-level math, “new math” screwed up my ability to comprehend what I was doing (I could do the math, just didn’t understand it). It wasn’t until I taught myself math decades later that I was actually able to grasp the underlying concepts.
I’m vintage 1955, and I was taught “new math” by people that understood math, to begin with. It was fun and useful. Before I got to the “new math,” though, I already was firmly grounded in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
I think that’s the key: you must have the basic skills, including times tables, well in hand before you start playing with “new math.” Then it’s a joy.
That “new math” was nothing like the recent common core crap foisted on our kids, which was written by people who had no math background, and who refused to take advice from their own math consultants. I’ve never seen so many angry parents, as those capable people who read their children’s homework and went ballistic over the gibberish.
According to the bizarro logic used by leftists, mathematics can be considered both racist colonialism AND cultural appropriation.
Basically anything Europeans do is evil and their existence is racism. That seems to be the common theme in modern leftist thought.
?? Greece is not on the African continent. It’s on the opposite side of the Mediterranean.
These pinheads will spout this nonsensical word salad and then wonder why first-year university students require remedial math.
They won’t wonder at all. That would imply they don’t already know all the answers, which claim is clearly just a pathetic attempt to reinforce white supremacy.
You can be so bad in a subject that remedial learning is not available. That is where this will go.
We saw this coming years ago. It was the spearpoint of “equity” — “every kid has to succeed.” So we gave them all diplomas and kicked the can down the road to the next school in line… whereas in the old days, we didn’t, and found them employment suitable to their capabilities instead.
Our generation is at fault, for giving theirs the impression that success was their birthright, instead of something they had to earn individually.
And if you want to see what our kids would be if we had continued instead to reinforce their understanding that success is the fruit of each individual’s effort, just look at Asian families.
Instead, our progeny now insists on “equity,” to take this illogical entitlement to its logical conclusion.
“…considering the fact that she was born and grew up in Africa…”
There’s your answer. I have found that African blacks are MUCH different from American blacks. As a matter of fact, more than a few are very disdainful of the black community here in America.
Your wife, in my opinion, simply didn’t let her skin color define her life. She wanted to study math…she studied math with great success. Well done to her!
Exactly. The problem is 100% cultural, but liberals try and fog the issue because their culture is based on race, so they claim it’s a ‘racial’ issue.
No, it’s not a ‘race’ issue, but the problem is that CULTURALLY, inner city blacks have decided to value race over anything else, and not only do they NOT culturally value education, they actively attack anybody that actually seeks an education as ‘acting white’. What a shock that they continue to be, by a large margin, the most uneducated and academically underperforming minority in the US.
Contrast that to Asian immigrants and children of Asian immigrants, who so highly value education and academic success that Ivy League has to penalize them literally hundreds of points on the SAT to not be 95% Asian. The average SAT score gap between an Asian and a US born black at an Ivy league school is over 400 points. One of my Asian friends applying to college was told point blank that if he didn’t have a 4.o GPA with at least 10 advanced placement credits and a 1600 to not even bother applying to an Ivy League school.
I always remember an old joke – the son of an Asian immigrant can only be 3 things. A Doctor, A Lawyer, or A Failure.
It’s not a ‘racial’ problem, the problem is a CULTURE that has decided to prioritize race and racial grievances over anything that would actually help them succeed.
No, it’s not a ‘race’ issue
Now do representative sampling.
What, apply math to a social problem? This is exactly how math is used to oppress marginalized people! Racist!
That’s meaningless. We understand that there is a large historical intersection between a given race and a given culture, same as between a given nationality and a given religion. But cultures and religions are not inborn. You can adopt another, and people who make advantageous decisions improve their lives (and vice versa). This is where you get your Thomas Sowells, GW Carvers, and Clarence Thomases. (It’s also where you get your Hoda Muthanas, Samra Kesinovics, and Mac Millers).
Most people aren’t going to use Algebra or geometry daily at work, but what it teaches is clarity of thought, using logic etc.
By eliminating that, they can get people to believe all kinds of pretzel logic used to “prove” BS like climate change causes terrorism, republicans were the ones who defunded the police and so on.
“Most people aren’t going to use Algebra or geometry daily at work”
What’s ironic is that most people need them “in life” more than “at work.”
Need to repair a cabinet panel in your house? Put in an even tile floor? Buy exterior paint or roof shingles? Lay out a deck or patio?
When I was 13, my sister’s first husband asked me what he needed to charge for a fixed-cost item he was selling, in order to make his cut exactly 30% of the final price, because it was beyond him. It was my first clue of how unsuited to adulthood he was. It took my sister two additional years.
This will go a long way to shore up the shortage of math and science grads available to compete for the abundant tech jobs. We are allowing ourselves to be systematically rendered stupid and ignorant. Apparently, we are too stupid and ignorant to realize it.
For the life of me, I simply cannot fathom how Americans can be in a position to impose this level of systematic stupidity and ignorance on an advanced society without evil intent and within a very well organized and entrenched conspiracy.
The only reason some Republicans are at least voicing their opposition to this (without a plan for fighting it, naturally) is that like with the 2nd amendment, voters WILL go after you. As bad as it looks for the Dems next year, there should be so much more fear in the hearts of the GOPe scoundrels like McConnell, Grahamnesty, and the rest than we are seeing. The only way we will fix the GOP is to first destroy it.
MAGA baby!!!
They’ve been crying for 30 years about the “lack” of American students in general, and women in particular, in STEM and/or math. All pure bullshit. There weren’t any jobs when I graduated in the mid 80s, and there still aren’t. Tell anyone you’re a math major, and you get greeted with blank stares and inane comments like “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?”
Nobody knows what to do with math people anyhow, so I don’t know why they constantly bitch about needing more math graduates.
One thought…the business consumers of college STEM programs have been hollaring about a shortage to induce more students to enter the field to depress wages.
“STEM” is a bit dodgy anyhow. Lots of STEM graduates doing non-STEM work. Lots of non-STEM graduates doing STEM work.
While engineers tend to have higher starting salaries, they also have a ceiling, and after awhile must migrate to management for continuing wage growth.
I knew it! Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem IS racist!
Now I understand the 2020 election results. Since math is subjective, it makes no difference how many votes were cast and for whom, beauty (or in this case election results) is/are in the eye of the beholder (government corruptocrat)! So they can even tell us that they are spending $500M on a bill when in point of fact $6T is going out of the taxpayer funded IRS and we should just sit back and take it up the wazoo. This whole “Math is Racist” thing came out of the ridiculous CRT idea born in the US. It has spread to Canada like cancerous cells. The next thing you know, graduation ceremonies will be honoring the dumbest in the class as Val-Edict-orian! or Salute-a=Tore-E-Um! Is there no end to the stupidity of these people? It would appear not!
To be fair, I don’t see where they say that mathematics itself is subjective, only that the way it has been portrayed and taught is:
“However, the content and the context in which it is taught, the mathematicians who are celebrated, and the importance that is placed upon mathematics by society are subjective.”
But whether or not they made the broader claim implied by the Toronto Sun’s headline, I still think it is a mistake to introduce politics of any stripe into the mathematics curriculum.
Several years ago the Ontario curriculum stopped teaching the multiplication tables in favour of “friendly numbers”.
I have degrees in engineering and mathematics/computer science from the premier STEM university in Ontario – one of the top three in the world. Even 25 years ago, the comp/elec eng and comp sci classes were largely SE Asian immigrants. This curriculum simply ensures that no Ontario students will be attending that university ever again.
I guess it’s time for me to restart my side hustle tutoring mathematics.
It all comes down to who did their homework faithfully and who didn’t, which specifically includes all those arithmetic problems, and with parents who care.
I have two degrees in “real” (i.e. pure) mathematics. I think part of what they are doing with this appeal to subjective social justice crap is driving away any student who has the talent, curiosity, and intellect to study math.
We can’t stomach this nonsense; indeed, one reason why I quit teaching part-time at the community college a few years ago was this push in the annual evaluations regarding “how do you plan to implement diversity in your teaching” and similar crap. That kind of thing is not only a turnoff but a huge red flag to those of us who are otherwise attracted to intellectual pursuits.
A frequent complaint heard for raising teacher salaries is a shortage of teachers. Teaching in the States has poor retention of those new to the profession. Many leave because of the level of inane bureaucratic crap. Politically correct thinking drives away sensible people and concentrates the types and volumes of craziness.
It is funny. Teachers quit because of the insane bureaucratic nonsense, but the solution isn’t to get rid of that stuff. I don’t personally know a single teacher that quit because of the pay. I know a lot that quit because we have to spend huge amounts of time on issues unrelated to teaching. A few do it because the kids aren’t all sweet little darlings who are eager to learn (understatement).
I had a kid with a mind that had a mathematical bent. That was ruined by the incompetence of the teachers in the San Diego Independent School District. They couldn’t teach the basics, particularly geometry, and forced the kids to write down steps, grading ONLY on process without concern AT ALL for results.
That kind of teaching will turn off a math kid, every time.
Morons.
Oh they are actively punishing kids that “act too white” – and taking away any advanced placement or advanced classes because there are too many Asian and White kids in them.
The real goal is to hobble the masses so its easier for their pets to compete.
Bank: You are overdrawn! Can’t you add and subract?!?
Customer: That’s a racist colonial construct! It’s only equitable for you to pay for all the checks I write. Oh, and overdraft fees are racist!
Why is it called Grade 9? Because 8 prior years plus this year makes 9? Isn’t Eurocentric math like 8+1=9 subjective and racist?
I had the same thought when the same lying commie crapweasels who are pushing this “ethnomath” also push concepts like mass incarceration and disparate impact.
How could they possibly know? Wouldn’t you have to be able to do math to figure out if the impact is disparate?
Would somebody tell me why Ontario – which has a small black population (% wise) which came fairly late to the province, never had slavery, never had Jim Crow, never had formal segregation, and whose primary minority is South Asians – is so into this anti-white race cr*p?
Marxists.
People that are comfortable and naive don’t understand when they are being played by sociopaths. They take the claims of sociopaths at face value and do not consider the possibility that they are being manipulated. You see them saying things like “I just want to be a good person” or “diversity is our strength” – because they really have never been in an adversarial situation. These people grew up with participation trophies and nerfed worlds where they were prevented from seeing anything real. Real evil, real suffering, real violence – is taught to them as something only Europeans did as they took over the world and created the countries of the Anglo-sphere.
In order to be a good person they must express guilt for this. In order to be a good person they must dedicate themselves to undermining the current civilization. They don’t understand the long term ramifications of their actions. They think that their intentions that this is all a good thing mean that the outcome will be good.
Alas – their naivete has left them blind to the manipulations of sociopaths – and sociopaths have inordinate power on social media.
If 二+二=西 and 二 x 七 = 十西 and this is not racist, colonial, or marginalising non-Eurocentric knowledge, then how is 2+2=4 and 2×7=14 racist, colonial, and marginalising non-Eurocentric knowledge?
The only difference is that one is done in Chinese, the other is in English. To contend there is a difference is to contend that English is unacceptable. That is racism in action. Seems like the Left are desperate for any pretext to reject and destroy the society they live in. Parents should simply reject their bigotry.
ちゅこくご でしたか？ にほんご と おもうたん だけ ど。 ようく できました げおrげさん。
I didn’t realize it was Chinese. They use the same characters in Japan; Kanji, or Chinese letters. Unfortunately the only Japanese text generator I find useful only uses Hiragana, one of two Japanese phonetic alphabets.
“used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges”
Srinivasa Ramanujan and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar raise their hands in objection.
A train leaves Toronto heading due west at 70 kph. How much time elapses until it reaches a place where government policies are not bat-crap crazy?
In their version of math, the shortest distance between two points appears to be a downward spiral.
Why “The Wire” is the best TV show ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YePRy8KWC4A
I love it. Couldn’t tie in any tighter with my comment above about the “spearpoint of equity.”
I’d like to be shown some examples of “non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledge”, with further detailed explanation about its superior “human quality” and applications.
Dishonest union members cannot do math, and want to change the subject from education to “organization.” We have seen this crap before, for example Barack Obama’s tenure at the Annenberg project.
Math is math. To say that it’s subjective is absolute horse manure.
Everything visible in the classroom photo that accompanies this article is a product of Western technical development, including math. If math were a “social construct”, how is it that the wall insulate, the light bulbs shine, the seats support the weight of the students, the floors don’t cave in and the ceilings don’t come crashing down? Coincidence? Luck?
Math, it continues, has been “used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges,”
Translated: Math gave Europeans a leg up on every culture and every society that didn’t have a similar command of the discipline and that “non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges” were unable to compete against a more thorough, rigorous, and complete system of mathematics. That seems pretty epic to me. Why turn away from something with that kind of power, instead of teaching kids to harness it for good? (As if that’s never happened.)
I think it would be less confusing to just call it the “Affirmative Action Curriculum”. Or maybe even the “We aren’t good enough teachers to be able to increase the math capabilities of minority students so we’re just gonna call it Racist Math Curriculum”. Sounds about right.
I just want to know who is going to build their bridges … or their roads … or any of their infrastructure …
The only good “rub” I can take from this is that perhaps they intent to destroy the myth that learning mathematics is “being white”.
Even a good drug dealer knows that was never true, though.
I’m a patriotic Jew who in the early 1970’s got a perfect “800” in math on the SAT, when doing so took real brains. My math talents have served me well in the course of my STEM career.
To the innumerate, lacking-in-neural-connections clods behind this pathetic BS, I have only one thing to say.
Go F$&# yourselves, and you can lick my mathematically superior b&tt.
Oops, that’s two. But they can’t count so it doesn’t matter.
There are a few “non-european” maths out there. For example, in Japan there is a tradition of geometric proofs of math identities that even rice farmers used to do for fun. It is cool. It will NOT be taught in the progressive math classes because there is still a right and wrong way to do it.
Some people bad at math estimated risk wrong and decided not to fix the apartment building which then fell down in florida. Wrong answers in the real world kill people. Even carpenters have to do some math. These people live in a world entirely enabled by advanced math: no math? no cell phone, no internet, no nothing. The claim that math was “used” to colonialize is self-refuting: if the people colonized had math they might not have lost. And hammers and shoes were also “used” to colonize–do we ban those?
In ancient Egypt it was critical to predict when the nile would rise to be ready for it–yep, math.
The claim that math is subjective is simply false and is presented without any evidence.
The only math that is subjective falls under the category of Artificial Intelligence. Note: Artificial is a synonym of fake or phony, as in artificial plants.
All computers run on binary math: ones and zeros, on and off, true and false.
All this is about is trying to foist chaos, from which to take complete control.
We know what comes after that: genocide.
This wimp Trudeau is proving to be as big a monster as a wimp named Obama.
These creeps are using math class time to talk about politics instead of teaching the subject matter of the class. They are defrauding the children. They should be damned to the very deepest circle of Hell. But before that, every last person who supports this should be removed by the parents from the presence of both children and older students.
The problem is that Common Core did not do enough to destroy the logic function in our children’s thinking. Sure, it made them more ignorant, but not ignorant enough. After functional math illiteracy has been achieved, then they will tell us that kids no longer need to be taught to read. Then they are reliant on what their ‘betters’ tell them.
Ironically, some of the most ironic math has 2+2=0.y’all know that.
But —-if a chap doesn’t know stuff like 2+2=4, and have a handle on primes, his tiny white mind is defeated by almost every code, because the chap never knows 2+2=0, the chap has no way to compare, and, it seems, IIRC, primes, at least white primes, a constitute an inviolate Russian/Chinese systemic structure for coding the destruction of missile defense system.
Is this math problem racist? 6/20 – 1 = 6/19