Is there a reason why educators in Oregon believe that black students are incapable of learning math? They believe so and have put together this document, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction, to explain it. If this were about math teachers being racist, a horrible if odd notion as if math teachers would discriminate more or differently than any other teacher, that would be one thing.
But that’s not what it’s about. Columbia prof john McWhorter explains.
The idea is to show us how our racial reckoning of late ought change how we expose black kids to math. I suppose the counsel is also intended for kids of other types of melanin, but this is in essence a document that could be called “Math For Black Kids.”
The latest is that state-level policy makers in Oregon are especially intrigued by this document. There is all reason to suppose that its influence will spread more widely.
And this is to resisted, as this lovely pamphlet is teaching us that it is racist to expect black kids to master the precision of math.
That’s not how the teachers explain it, of course. They use a language of their own.
The framework for deconstructing racism in mathematics offers essential characteristics of antiracist math educators and critical approaches to dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by visualizing the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture.
A mouthful, perhaps, but it’s not all calorie-free word salad. They include teaching black students about black mathematicians (“reclaiming their mathematical ancestry”) and there’s the Yoruba approach using Base 20, which is great if you spend time in Western Africa. But what about the math?
Yes, the document pays lip service otherwise, claiming at one point to seek to “teach rich, thoughtful, complex mathematics.” And rather often, the word praxis is used. But the thrust of this pamphlet is that:
1. a focus on getting the “right” answer is “perfectionism” or “either/or thinking;”
2. the idea that teachers are teachers and students are learners is wrong;
3. to think of it as a problem that the expectations you have of students are not met is racist;
4. to teach math in a linear fashion with skills taught in sequence is racist;
5. to value “procedural fluency” – i.e. knowing how to do the fractions, long division … — over “conceptual knowledge” is racist. That is, black kids are brilliant to know what math is trying to do, to know “what it’s all about,” rather than to actually do the math, just as many of us read about what physics or astrophysics accomplishes without ever intending to master the math that led to the conclusions;
6. to require students to “show their work” is racist;
7. requiring students to raise their hand before speaking “can reinforce paternalism and powerhoarding, in addition to breaking the process of thinking, learning, and communicating.”
Some might immediately decry this as the soft bigotry of low expectations, as if it’s just too hard to black kids to do math, so let’s call it racist, dumb it down and produce students who ace math but can’t add. Will it be good enough to get them into Harvard via its holistic admissions that their math grades were superlative even if they couldn’t tell a fraction if it bit them in the butt? Who needs math anyway?
As McWhorter notes, it’s unlikely that math teachers, even the most woke of Oregonians, are likely to not squeeze a little math instruction into their classroom, with apologies for perpetuating the white supremacy of correct answers. So then, what’s the big deal of these inane screeds?
As in, first it is racism propounded as antiracism. Black kids shouldn’t expected to master the precision of math and should be celebrated for talking around it, gamely approximating its answers and saying why it can be dangerous? This is bigotry right out of Reconstruction, Tulsa, Selma, and Charlottesville.
Second, it is not science but scripture. It claims to be about teaching math while founded on shielding students from the requirement to actually do it. This is unempirical. It does so with an implication that only a moral transgressor numb to some larger point would question the contradiction. This is, as such, a religious document, telling you to accept that Jesus walked on water.
In his first point, McWhorter is fighting for the future of black students. By reducing the expectations of mastering a basic subject matter, you end up with math-incapable students. Black kids can do math. Black kids can learn math. Unless you don’t teach them math, in which case some will not, Can black kids succeed without the basic skills necessary to survive? Well, we can change what constitutes necessary skills, but does anybody want to drive over a bridge designed by someone who can’t do math?
The second point is directed to those for whom tossing the word salad of racism and white supremacy is a substitute for rational thought. Religion isn’t about believing in a deity, per se, as much as blind faith in irrational beliefs. No doubt the people who crafted this document believed they were being antiracist by being racist, by substituting ideological gibberish for rational thought.
The “debate” over whether 2+2=4 was taken very seriously by deeply passionate people who argued the point within an inch of its life.
This doesn’t work. This can’t work. Society can’t function if we each get to assign our own values to numbers so that whatever outcome we reach is right for us.
You can love equality, even equity if you must, all you want, but if you want to help black students to achieve success, stop treating them like incapable idiots for whom stuff like math is just too hard, too white, to expect them to master it. Teach them math. They can do it. And keep your religion to yourself.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
How would Orwell have described this? Perhaps; “All numbers aren’t equal, but some numbers aren’t more equal than others”? Or maybe; “Addition is subtraction, subtraction is division, trigonometry is strength”
Robert Heinlein.
“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”
Well, this is certainly a racist comment. When will the woke demand his books be removed from libraries?
Whether or not it was racist when uttered, I can’t say, but it is surprisingly mean-spirited.
He was a product of his time, education, and social class.
Should we judge him by today’s standards?
Even so, an odd choice of words for his time.
I’m sure profs Kaloni (Multivariate Calculus) and Chandna (Differential Equations I) from my college days would have been rather puzzled by the accusation they were promoting white supremacy, and they were not men who were easily puzzled. But then again, these were mathematicians, whose life’s work was mathematics, as opposed to “Math Educators” affiliated with the Faculty of Education. The latter was an entirely separate fiefdom in academia, and I don’t gather they welcomed, let alone sought out, the advice and direction of actual mathematicians.
That’s a good point, that this comes from “educators” as opposed to people who have achieved mastery of something.
Benign racism is OK. It’s the Biden precept. This is the kinder, gentler racism that spares black children the trauma of trying to deal with math, since they can’t reasonably be expected to get it. Paternal, “white man’s burden” racism in the old Kipling style, but it’s good, because it’s well-intentioned.
“And so you’ve got thirteen tens
And you take away seven
And that leaves five
Well, six actually
But the idea is the important thing!”
From the lyrics of the Tom Lehrer song New Math of 1965. (Yes there are videos available, but I don’t rate posting them.) These “teachers” grandparents were doing the same thing without race as an excuse back before some of us were born.
It’s Tom Lehrer, and I assumed someone would do the right thing.
While your link is indeed to a recording of Tom Lehrer singing the song you intended, the video owner (who is NOT Tom Lehrer) apparently wants all the advertising that playing it solely on Youtube provides. It is a trite issue, perhaps, but is there a way for you, owner of a great (if diminutive) site, can distinguish between such videos without having to do all the work of linking them beforehand?
Hope you like this version better.
“a focus on getting the ‘right’ answer is ‘perfectionism’ or ‘either/or thinking'”
Well either the bridge stands or it falls. But maybe I’m not considering the identities of the people crossing it.
Some people must think dystopias are always planned that way.
I reliably informed that as the bridge sways to the point of breaking, everyone on it shares the same identity: scared shitless.
Do they really think I would let my kids be denied an education? If they destroy the quality of public education, the people who care about education will either home school or pay for a private education. I moved from a town with crappy schools to an expensive Oregon college town 3 months before my eldest entered kindergarten. My poorer neighbors were stuck.
They really believe they are doing the right thing. As McWhorter says, this isn’t about reason, but religion. They believe and you can’t make them unbelieve.
Euclid’s Geometry is the second most printed book in history for a reason. Euclid and mathematics represented something that was always true and not dependent on gods, kings, prophets, or priests for that truth. Two parallel lines are two parallel lines whether you are ancient Greek or modern man of any color. To deny this indicates stupidity in the extreme.
I guess “ignorance is strength” is the new motto of the woke. The outright prejudice of the “educators” is astonishing.
No, just no.
Euclid’s fifth postulate was assumed inviolate for centuries. Only when mathematicians set out to prove its inverse did they discover non-Euclidean geometry. It’s the best example I know of there being multiple “correct” answers to a mathematical problem.
Next time, just stick with 2 + 2.
I am well aware of Rieman, et. al.
So you knew it was a bad example and yet shared it anyway.
(Does a double facepalm require one or two facepalms?)
Got me!
There are a great many problems in mathematics that have more than one correct solution. And certainly there are exotic conditions and systems where the usual rules break down. But that has nothing to do with what “woke math” proponents are talking about when they talk of de-emphasizing “getting the right answer”. If a student struggles with understanding mundane problems with single solutions, like counting beans and making change, we’re not going to help matters by introducing more complex or esoteric topics – no matter how much they decry teaching “in a linear fashion.”
If a student struggles with understanding mundane problems with single solutions, like counting beans and making change, we’re not going to help matters by introducing more complex or esoteric topics – no matter how much they decry teaching “in a linear fashion.”
I disagree. My (then) 3 year old assumed the planes in the sky were tiny. So I took two bricks to her, brought one far away and asked her about their size.
It took a few back and forths, but she understood solid angles as a concept better than I did in college. I asked my 5 year old what happens when you add a side to the triangle and then another and another. Soon, she said it was becoming a circle.
Limit equations. Here was a kindergartener understanding the concept that won’t even be attempted for most through high school.
The substance of the nonsense above, like many things, has grains of educational material that has been floated around by our best mathematical teachers for ages. This capture by the woke to declare that it’s “racism” as opposed to just a non-optimal teaching method is the issue.
Teaching linear concepts sounds like a necessary thing to most people, but it’s really not. The truly obscene thing here isn’t the suggestion that non-linear learning is better. It’s that linear learning is racist.
Different methods work for different people, but that’s got nothing to do with the post. If you want to have a discussion of teaching methods, do it on your own blog.
I apologize for not putting the comment in a way you were able to understand.
You raise two points McWhorter makes. The first (whether these suggestions constitute a break from necessary skills) is weak. The only reason it exists in his essay is the misapplied connection (of an otherwise cogent pedagogical response) to religion. The suggestions on their own wouldn’t merit inclusion here — only their motivations do.
Of course, that makes his second point of the word salad error, stronger.
Aren’t you making people dumber? Euclid’s fifth postulate, or the parallel postulate, is still perfectly valid in the default case of non-curved surfaces/spaces, which is the geometry that most people learn and are concerned with. There are many problems in mathematics which have multiple correct answers, but this isn’t one of them. The only argument you can make is that people should realize that this doesn’t apply on the surface of a globe, etc., but that doesn’t change it’s value or truth.
Seriously? Is this now a Euclid debate? FFS.
They are not just doing this for racist reasons. I have read a number of articles by other “educators” who are trying to eliminate even the need to teach arithmetic, “because people don’t have to do it any more – they just punch buttons on a calculator and get an answer”. Having experienced a failure to be able to make change, by several Young People of Palor, in a large box store where they are paid $16/hr (and they probably don’t understand THAT aspect of math, either), I can testify that the educators have been successful.
And there were all sorts of rumors floating around that a certain bridge that fell down in Florida a few years ago was “designed” by students who were not very familiar with all the necessary mathematical and engineering concepts, but were focused more on aesthetics. The “design” was supposed to be checked by Oppressive White Men, but they were not given enough resources to do it, so they just accepted the original “design”. And it fell down. Go read the NTSB reports, for details.
There’s no evidence in the OSHA report, NTSB report or media coverage to even suggest the design flaws were introduced by students. The lead engineer of the design firm was 62 at the time of collapse, and his recorded voicemail to a state official saying to not worry about the cracks was a key piece of evidence. In fact, one problem cited in the reports was that far too many people deferred to the lead engineer and didn’t challenge or review his design. The proximate cause of the collapse was a change the 62 year old lead engineer specifically ordered a change that regulators say the builder should have refused.
No, you don’t get to turn this into a debate about the cause of the bridge collapse, even if it hurts your feelings. Here’s the report and people can decide whatever they decide. I suspect no one will give a shit except you, Quinn.
Have you ascertained Quinn’s preferred pronouns, because I would like to tell Quinn my deeply held and passionate truth about the value of Quinn’s contributions to the commentariat, but I would hate to offend Quinn by using the wrong pronouns.
Miles.
It’s funny you ask, as DML assumed Quinn to be female in addressing Quinn the other day, while I’ve never been sure since Quinn could be male or female, or Quinn could identify as something else. I wondered about that. But in your case, I suspect pronouns are the least offensive thing you will have to say.
The schools should show the movie “Hidden Figures.” And then teach math.
That’s a great idea, and a great movie.