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"It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear

"It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” This scares and angers me in a way that I am struggling to express.

inglor_cz 5y ago
The neo-racist idea that rational thinking and scientific culture is an expression of "whiteness" creeps out of the woodwork again and again. Remember the infographics that the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture published and later withdrew? https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333 https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa... My suspicion is that the woke know very well that their ideology is very brittle. Maybe it wasn't in the beginning, but by now it has been embellished by so many absurdities that even Titania McGrath cannot keep up. And the only way how to avoid the explosion and crash of the brittle ideology is never to confront it with logic and critical thinking. Which you only can do by associating rationality with the worst possible label, racism. Some people will do anything not to be labeled racist. Of course, if the woke can really get away with that, China will eat Western Civ alive. Without the scientific method, West is just a random bunch of mostly Indoeuropean-speaking territories. We were once the boring backwater of the world. We can return to that state again.
- candiodari 5y ago
  > Of course, if the woke can really get away with that, ... What do all ideologies say to the god of reality ? "Not today"
nxc18 5y ago
I wish the leftists doing things like this would take the time to think about the consequences. It isn’t helping their cause to make clowns of themselves. That is painful as someone who genuinely wants to see reform and many leftist ideas succeed.
- candiodari 5y ago
  Sadly this is wrong. Nothing to do with leftism, rightism, ... Any mass ideology has the same problem: half the people in the world are below-average. Which means that any movement that grows consists of ever more below-average people. There is no movement of more than a few thousand people which is significantly above average unless a ridiculously high cost is paid for this to happen. Therefore any theory that has political parties on board in any country is very accomodating of idiots. Half of them are idiots.
  - nxc18 5y ago
    This is a really great point, and I hadn’t thought of it like that. Thank you
  - RhysU 5y ago
    Look at life satisfaction and success metrics, however you value them personally and from a source that you trust, conditioned on membership in the parties in your country. While half of everyone in a country must be unconditionally at or below average within the country that does not imply the same results hold conditional on party membership. I can't speak to the 'high cost' comment other than to suggest maybe look at medians in addition to modes.
eesmith 5y ago
A quick look at https://equitablemath.org/ https://equitablemath.org/ shows that the quotes in the WSJ are overly selective, leaving out important context. Take "getting the right answer". The full statement in the Equitable Math document is: """There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning.""" It explains: """Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict. Some math problems may have more than one right answer and some may not have a solution at all, depending on the content and the context. And when the focus is only on getting the right answer, the complexity of the mathematical concepts and reasoning may be underdeveloped, missing opportunities for deep learning.""" It instead argues that math educators should "Choose problems that have complex, competing, or multiple answers" and "Engage with true problem solving". Finally, it comments: """Of course, most math problems have correct answers, but sometimes there can be more than one way to interpret a problem, especially word problems, leading to more than one possible right answer. And teaching math isn't just about solving specific problems. It's about helping students understand the deeper mathematical concepts so that they can apply them throughout their lives.""" Or, here's the context around "linear fashion": """Math is taught in a linear fashion and skills are taught sequentially without true understanding of prerequisite knowledge""" with commentary: """While some mathematical skills and concepts build off each other, the forced construct of linear teaching reinforces objectivity. A prime example is how matrices is considered a precalculus standard, even though the only math skill needed as a prerequisite is arithmetic. This is highly detrimental to students because they are systematically deprived of knowledge they could access due to false constructs. Math teachers have internalized the sequences that have been predetermined by standards and textbooks, rather than sequencing learning based on (pre)requisite knowledge. In general, teachers teach math like a ladder rather than a web. """ The actual context for "show their work" is "Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways.". The problem is "that can center the teacher’s need to understand rather than student learning. Teachers should seek to understand individual student perspectives and focus on students showing their work in ways that help students learn how to process information." Frankly, I think those observations and commentary are correct, and the WSJ op-ed piece was deliberately constructed to scare and anger readers without being informative.
- 5y ago
wahern 5y ago
The phrase "white supremacy" occurs in none of the thirteen chapters of the proposal at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/index.asp https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/index.asp. The author seems to have pulled that quote and some other money quotes from a non-affiliated website. People of similar ideological persuasions tend to travel in the same circles (figuratively and otherwise), but it's disingenuous, to say the least, to implicitly attribute quotes from one group to another. There's a cavalcade of non-sequitur woke logic in the Introduction to the official draft proposal. Feel free to read it. But the WSJ article is just another culture war hit piece that barely tries to critique the substance of the proposal, which notwithstanding the voluminous justifications are fairly simple on their face. Because they're simple they should be easy to attack on their own terms. But no one group can stake a claim to rhetorical laziness, and so it's rare to see anybody put in the effort. Anyhow, I'm pretty sure the proposal is a done deal. And in the grand scheme of things I doubt it will matter. The reason the proposal is wrong-headed is because no amount of curriculum tweaking could ever begin to overcome the deficits that a child may suffer from outside school--family, community, etc. Decades of public school investments and analyses have borne this out time and again. But by the same token, a kid benefiting from a more supportive home and peer environment is unlikely to be ill effected. Though, the second order effects might be real, such as an increase in private school attendance. The Catholic parochial schools in San Francisco have grown continuously for many years. (They're much cheaper than secular private schools; often a bare majority or less of the kids are Catholic.) Something like 25% of SF students go to private schools. My kid goes to a Catholic school (partly for legitimate religious reasons), but it was a close call, and we almost sent him to our neighborhood public school. He attended public T-K in SF and we were very happy w/ his teacher and his school. One thing to understand about public schools in California is that they're extremely balkanized. The requirement that all public schools across the state receive identical funding has had the unintended side-effect of increasing parental involvement in those communities where parents are relatively more predisposed to do so, often donating a tremendous amount of time and money. (There are apparently various ways that additional money is used to enhance education without running afoul of budgeting rules.) It's not just an economic class thing as in San Francisco poor and working class Asian families are just as or more likely to involve themselves w/ their children's school as any well-off family in Marin. Private school principals and teachers elsewhere in the U.S. accustomed to dealing with aggressively demanding parents would feel right at home at plenty of public schools in California.
zozbot234 5y ago
"School math is white supremacist. Let's teach Voodoo math instead!" You're just not appreciating the superiority of native African culture.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Voodoo math is how I prove all my algorithms

inglor_cz 5y ago

The neo-racist idea that rational thinking and scientific culture is an expression of "whiteness" creeps out of the woodwork again and again. Remember the infographics that the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture published and later withdrew? https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333 https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa... My suspicion is that the woke know very well that their ideology is very brittle. Maybe it wasn't in the beginning, but by now it has been embellished by so many absurdities that even Titania McGrath cannot keep up. And the only way how to avoid the explosion and crash of the brittle ideology is never to confront it with logic and critical thinking. Which you only can do by associating rationality with the worst possible label, racism. Some people will do anything not to be labeled racist. Of course, if the woke can really get away with that, China will eat Western Civ alive. Without the scientific method, West is just a random bunch of mostly Indoeuropean-speaking territories. We were once the boring backwater of the world. We can return to that state again.

candiodari 5y ago
> Of course, if the woke can really get away with that, ... What do all ideologies say to the god of reality ? "Not today"

nxc18 5y ago

I wish the leftists doing things like this would take the time to think about the consequences. It isn’t helping their cause to make clowns of themselves. That is painful as someone who genuinely wants to see reform and many leftist ideas succeed.

candiodari 5y ago
Sadly this is wrong. Nothing to do with leftism, rightism, ... Any mass ideology has the same problem: half the people in the world are below-average. Which means that any movement that grows consists of ever more below-average people. There is no movement of more than a few thousand people which is significantly above average unless a ridiculously high cost is paid for this to happen. Therefore any theory that has political parties on board in any country is very accomodating of idiots. Half of them are idiots.
- nxc18 5y ago
  This is a really great point, and I hadn’t thought of it like that. Thank you
- RhysU 5y ago
  Look at life satisfaction and success metrics, however you value them personally and from a source that you trust, conditioned on membership in the parties in your country. While half of everyone in a country must be unconditionally at or below average within the country that does not imply the same results hold conditional on party membership. I can't speak to the 'high cost' comment other than to suggest maybe look at medians in addition to modes.

eesmith 5y ago

A quick look at https://equitablemath.org/ https://equitablemath.org/ shows that the quotes in the WSJ are overly selective, leaving out important context. Take "getting the right answer". The full statement in the Equitable Math document is: """There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning.""" It explains: """Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict. Some math problems may have more than one right answer and some may not have a solution at all, depending on the content and the context. And when the focus is only on getting the right answer, the complexity of the mathematical concepts and reasoning may be underdeveloped, missing opportunities for deep learning.""" It instead argues that math educators should "Choose problems that have complex, competing, or multiple answers" and "Engage with true problem solving". Finally, it comments: """Of course, most math problems have correct answers, but sometimes there can be more than one way to interpret a problem, especially word problems, leading to more than one possible right answer. And teaching math isn't just about solving specific problems. It's about helping students understand the deeper mathematical concepts so that they can apply them throughout their lives.""" Or, here's the context around "linear fashion": """Math is taught in a linear fashion and skills are taught sequentially without true understanding of prerequisite knowledge""" with commentary: """While some mathematical skills and concepts build off each other, the forced construct of linear teaching reinforces objectivity. A prime example is how matrices is considered a precalculus standard, even though the only math skill needed as a prerequisite is arithmetic. This is highly detrimental to students because they are systematically deprived of knowledge they could access due to false constructs. Math teachers have internalized the sequences that have been predetermined by standards and textbooks, rather than sequencing learning based on (pre)requisite knowledge. In general, teachers teach math like a ladder rather than a web. """ The actual context for "show their work" is "Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways.". The problem is "that can center the teacher’s need to understand rather than student learning. Teachers should seek to understand individual student perspectives and focus on students showing their work in ways that help students learn how to process information." Frankly, I think those observations and commentary are correct, and the WSJ op-ed piece was deliberately constructed to scare and anger readers without being informative.

5y ago

wahern 5y ago

The phrase "white supremacy" occurs in none of the thirteen chapters of the proposal at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/index.asp https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/index.asp. The author seems to have pulled that quote and some other money quotes from a non-affiliated website. People of similar ideological persuasions tend to travel in the same circles (figuratively and otherwise), but it's disingenuous, to say the least, to implicitly attribute quotes from one group to another. There's a cavalcade of non-sequitur woke logic in the Introduction to the official draft proposal. Feel free to read it. But the WSJ article is just another culture war hit piece that barely tries to critique the substance of the proposal, which notwithstanding the voluminous justifications are fairly simple on their face. Because they're simple they should be easy to attack on their own terms. But no one group can stake a claim to rhetorical laziness, and so it's rare to see anybody put in the effort. Anyhow, I'm pretty sure the proposal is a done deal. And in the grand scheme of things I doubt it will matter. The reason the proposal is wrong-headed is because no amount of curriculum tweaking could ever begin to overcome the deficits that a child may suffer from outside school--family, community, etc. Decades of public school investments and analyses have borne this out time and again. But by the same token, a kid benefiting from a more supportive home and peer environment is unlikely to be ill effected. Though, the second order effects might be real, such as an increase in private school attendance. The Catholic parochial schools in San Francisco have grown continuously for many years. (They're much cheaper than secular private schools; often a bare majority or less of the kids are Catholic.) Something like 25% of SF students go to private schools. My kid goes to a Catholic school (partly for legitimate religious reasons), but it was a close call, and we almost sent him to our neighborhood public school. He attended public T-K in SF and we were very happy w/ his teacher and his school. One thing to understand about public schools in California is that they're extremely balkanized. The requirement that all public schools across the state receive identical funding has had the unintended side-effect of increasing parental involvement in those communities where parents are relatively more predisposed to do so, often donating a tremendous amount of time and money. (There are apparently various ways that additional money is used to enhance education without running afoul of budgeting rules.) It's not just an economic class thing as in San Francisco poor and working class Asian families are just as or more likely to involve themselves w/ their children's school as any well-off family in Marin. Private school principals and teachers elsewhere in the U.S. accustomed to dealing with aggressively demanding parents would feel right at home at plenty of public schools in California.

zozbot234 5y ago

"School math is white supremacist. Let's teach Voodoo math instead!" You're just not appreciating the superiority of native African culture.

mhh__ 5y ago
Voodoo math is how I prove all my algorithms