As criticism of the “new” new math being taught in the upper right hand corner of America simmers, and below it the eradication of any expectation that black students be expected to add and subtract to get a diploma festers, academics are trying to find better strategies to avoid the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and teach students sufficient skills to survive, if not thrive, in the future.
When Oregon governor Kate Brown signed a law in July that suspended math and reading proficiency requirements for high school graduation for three years, an uproar ensued. Republicans charged that the state had abandoned academic standards, while the Democratic governor’s spokesperson declared that the move would help benefit the state’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
A headline on The Dispatch, a conservative website, might give you a sense of the debate’s tenor: “Oregon Democrats Resurrect the ‘Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations’ … A new law allows students to graduate from high school without the ability to read, write, or do math.”
The rationale behind these woke solutions is easily digestible. There’s just one minor problem.
In today’s data- and technology-rich, STEM-oriented society, those without quantitative and statistical literacy, he believed, were relegated to the back of another bus.
Civic equity and access to the advanced employment ultimately hinge on mastery of math. But in California as recently as 2017, 110,000 of 170,000 undergraduates placed in remedial math never, ever fulfilled the math requirement for an associate degree.
According to one study of community college students, 50 to 60 percent of the disparity in degree completion is driven by which students are placed in remedial math classes.
At the end of the day, it students can’t do math, they still can’t do math, and that means they can’t do jobs or live lives that require math. No amount of gibberish excuses is going to change that unfortunate fact. What to do?
One exciting strategy that a growing number of K-12 math teachers have pursued is to link math and social justice issues.
These instructors have sought to engage students and demonstrate math’s relevance by studying racial and class disparities, crime and incarceration, inequalities of wealth and income, gerrymandering and ranked-choice voting, immigration, the distribution of disaster aid and college entrance exam scores, the relationship between campaign spending and votes received, and environmental issues using algebraic functions, data visualization techniques, mathematical modeling and statistical methods.
Is this the magic that’s missing from math instruction, linking the skills to social justice?
Does this pedagogical approach help students master math? We don’t know. Is teaching math through a social justice lens creating a two-tiered system, in which affluent students learn “college prep math” while those from low-income backgrounds learn “real-world math” that ill prepares them for success in college STEM courses? Again, we don’t know.
A few questions persist. The most obvious is whether this will serve to teach math or become an opportunity to bring social justice into yet another discipline, as if history and English weren’t enough. Then there’s the indoctrination problem, which we’re reliably informed never happens. Would students be asked to calculate the extreme rarity of an unarmed black man being killed by police relative to the number of police engagements, or would that not be the part of the lesson plan?
But mostly, is this version of woke math good enough to prepare students to go to college, to study physics or engineering, or only to become a community activist while making change at the Piggly Wiggly?
Is there a sound reason why pedagogical theorists have given up on just teaching math and demanding that students of all stripes be required to learn it, rather than coming up with gimmick after gimmick to circumvent the pedagogical failure to prepare all students for a “data- and technology-rich, STEM-oriented society” in which they can succeed?
Or is it true that this really reflects the soft bigotry of low expectations, that black kids just can’t learn math? If they can, and they can, then what’s wrong with just teaching them math as they do anyone else?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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Good grief, exciting to whom, besides people hoping to publish in social science journals? Even that aside, there are obvious problems with the approach. The first is that it would inevitably be statistics-heavy, and a well-rounded mathematics education requires a great deal more. The second is that proper engagement with statistics at a level required to critically examine the social sciences literature requires a foundation in mathematics far beyond what brought students into remedial math courses in the first place.
85% of statistics are made up.
Lies, damn lies and statistics
“We don’t want to make them learn math because it’s hard and might make them feel inferior, but oh hell yeah we’ll take any opportunity to indoctrinate, even though teaching them that they’re gonna spend their whole life being oppressed might make them feel inferior.”
Makes sense if you disengage your brain.
“the move would help benefit the states Black, Latino, Latinx, indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color”.
How? Would someone in the media come out of their politics-induced coma long enough to simply ask how this helps them?
Nice to know though that it will help both Latino and Latinx students. Wouldn’t want to leave anybody out.
Note too that the spox threw in “Asians,” even though their mathematics attainment comes in substantially ahead of that of their white peers on average. This is true both in Oregon (p. 28) and nationally (p. 74). It’s unclear to me how declaring an area in which minority students already excel, if white-student performance is treated as the benchmark, moot benefits that minority, but then, I wasn’t educated in an Oregon public school.
I sense a theme happening today.
I dunno, somethin’ doesn’t add up.
Twofer Tuesday.
Way back when there were newspapers delivered to houses everyday there were sports sections.
In those sections were statistics. Winning percentages, batting stats, all kinds of stats….it is how many boys learned some math.
With the proliferation of online betting I bet kids would be more enthusiastic about trying to figure betting odds because they get money _ maybe.
I am being a bit silly I know.
Is it really “soft bigotry”? This seems to the Biden Precept, that racism is OK as long as it is expressed in quiet assumptions of superiority and paternalism, rather than hostility. It may be kinder, gentler racism, but it’s still the same animal. The wokey racists are too stupid to even understand what they are, or that what they are trumpeting is racism.
It’s OK, they’ve redefined racism in such a way that they aren’t, and those who disagree with them can’t *not* be.
After re-reading today’s post three times and subtracting all the divisive rhetoric, my best guess is you are trying to determine if critical mathematics pedagogy is a solution to the decades-old ‘teaching math is hard’ problem.
To the best of my knowledge, no valid study on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of critical mathematics pedagogy exists.
Or was the point to get a bunch of uninformed opinions on an incredibly complex problem that has negative consequences for individuals and the economy as a whole?
Calling it “critical math pedagogy” sounds so much cooler that “woke math,” as educators do who grasp that you don’t screw with curricula that is long on fantasy theory and short on empirical grounding when it comes to real children’s lives.
You aren’t allowed to use the permanent marker yet. No subtractions. Whether the rhetoric is “divisive” or not has nothing to do with whether the rhetoric is effective. You have to know that.
Then you punt by kicking the ball to empiricism. You don’t know if any studies exist or not. I’m horrified by your inclusion of the word “valid”. Nineteen words to say nothing.
Then you accuse the Host of somehow wanting the very thing he clearly rejects openly and often. How can you be so perfectly backwards all of the time? There’s some red pen on your attempt. “Needs work”.
As an engineer there is a certain irony reading lawyers discussing math while proclaiming only lawyers really understand the law.
You also misrepresent the nature of the connection of math and social justice. You reference K-12 math education while your link is to material specific to high school curriculum. The book is titled “High School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Understand, and Respond to Social Injustice”.
The topics covered shown on the contents page appear to be pretty standard high school topics such as Algebra, Functions, Geometry, Statistics, and more. Relating these topics to real world problems seems to be a good idea.
If students are engaged by the context this may motivate them to understand the mathematical concepts, I see this as a positive. Also by combining mathematics and social topics, students learn to apply the analytical skills taught in mathematics to their surroundings. This should improve their analytical skills.
Frankly much of the high school mathematics that are taught are done so in a very abstract manner that is best suited for those that will move on to technical careers. I would be curious as to how much calculus is used in most legal practices? For that matter, when did you last need to apply the side angle side theorem from high school geometry?
Not sure why people fear teaching students about wealth distribution (chapter 5.4), the census (chapter 7.2), or globalization (chapter 6.7). Why is this even controversial or worthy of a Tuesday discussion?
One thing lawyers can do which engineers apparently can’t is read and distinguish who is saying what. It’s the author of the Inside Higher Ed article who references K-12, not Scott, and he’s a history prof at UT, not a lawyer. On the other hand, lawyers go through school (K-12) including high school and learn math like pretty much everybody else.
If you’re going to try to be a snarky asshole, at least try harder to not fuck it up in the process. Now go drive your train, engineer.
“When Oregon governor Kate Brown signed a law…”
And from there the discussion amongst lawyers begins. It doesn’t dive into a discussion of any mathematical problems, so I’m not sure why you think this should remain in the realm of mathematicians (and engineers, presumably).
“[O]nly lawyers really understand the law.”
That’s the only thing you correctly stated. You come to a Hotel occupied by lawyers and judges, at least suggesting you know law. The other denizens spent 7 years in school to get the opportunity to learn law, then at least 10 years of practice with someone more experienced before they were functional. For many, functionality came long ago.
But you, an engineer, find it ironic that lawyers and judges know law far better than you. You, an engineer, can figure the law because it’s simple.
Here’s what lawyers don’t do: we never assume the knowledge of some other professional. We rely on them to tell us, educate us, on their field. We never go pissing in some other guys field because it always makes us look stupid.
You’re spewing to an educated group. We’ll welcome you, but stay in your lane. Remember, your lane is narrow and bullshit is unwelcome.
The issue isn’t fear of teaching students about wealth distribution or globalization, but of failing to actually teach them mathematics. It doesn’t suffice to place a lesson under a heading of “geometry” in order to actually teach key high-school concepts of geometry. I’ve downloaded the online resources for one of the lessons from the book in question, a lesson supposedly about geometry using gerrymandering as a “hook”. It was a pretty good high-school level explanation of gerrymandering, but basically failed to introduce high-school level geometry concepts. Calculating the areas of rectangles and circles is an elementary-level geometry skill, and things like the Polsby-Popper score and Roeck ratio are not really geometrical concepts themselves, but political science measures based on rather elementary geometrical concepts. If you can figure out how to teach actual geometry using social justice as a hook, go ahead- I’d like to see how you go about it. You can even teach social justice concepts using math as a hook. But if the intention is to teach math, we cannot afford to do the latter and pretend it’s the former.
Maybe the new teaching is a grasping at straws given the present abysmal state of knowledge of STEM by a large portion of the populace as exemplified by reactions to the current pandemic?
And cultural relevancy has long been used in teaching mathematics as illustrated by this problem from a textbook published when i was just a sprat:
A sea captain on a voyage, had a crew of 30 men, half of whom were blacks. Being becalmed on the passage for a long time, their provisions began to fail, and the captain became satisfied, that unless the number of men was greatly diminished, all would perish of hunger before they could reach any friendly port. He therefore proposed to the sailors that they should stand in a row on deck, and that every ninth man should be thrown overboard until one-half of the crew were thus destroyed. To this they all agreed. How should they stand so as to save the whites ? Ans. [deleted]
This problem was more equitably resolved in Yarn of the Nancy Bell, where no specific mention of race is made, and the crew initially resorted to drawing lots to determine who would be consumed by whom.
Perhaps you will let this math major have a tangentially related rant.
Math is hard for most people including or perhaps especially educators. Back in the days of the dinosaurs like us, math was about solving problems. Teachers did this adequately and most people did okay. The mathematically inclined got a basis to proceed. But some people failed because math is hard.
Then someone had the bright idea that we should teach students to think like mathematicians which doubles the difficulty. Teachers and textbook writers who could do basic arithmetic were suddenly assigned to do teach and write about concepts that were beyond them.
The result was teachers using poorly written math books attempting to teach concepts that a large percentage of parents, teachers and students would never understand which frustrated them. The bright students and parents struggled to overcome the nonsensical mush that was being “taught.” I spent too many days helping overcome homework assignment where the problems were simply wrong because the authors (and teachers) did not understand the point of the lesson.
While I’m supposed to keep my nose out of TTs, a quick story. My son, who went on to graduate from MIT, got terrible grades in elementary school math. So we went in to see the teacher, who informed us that his answers were always correct, but he never showed his work. Their rubric required students to show their work. So I asked my son, why don’t you show your work and he told me, “There’s no work. That’s just what the answer is.”
Best of both worlds, a true master.
I’m still laughing at this hours later.
As am I, much later.
That’s why mathematicians invented the phrase “by inspection”.
I don’t know about math, but on law blogs, a tangent equals sin cos it throws off the discourse.
That said, you make a great point. Too much of the latest in math seems to be directed toward exploring ideas (“why” math”) rather than giving students the fundamental tools that they need to succeed (“how” math). Using “social justice” as a theme for word problems isn’t going to give students the ability to perform basic operations.
>One exciting strategy that a growing number of K-12 math teachers have pursued is
I was really hoping they went the same route as “The Wire”, but reality constantly disappoints.