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The program is called Equitable Math and it frames current mathematics pedagogy as a mechanism by which White Supremacy is sustained.¹ Note that in a very long

The program is called Equitable Math and it frames current mathematics pedagogy as a mechanism by which White Supremacy is sustained.¹ Note that in a very long multi-part document on White Supremacy, there is absolutely zero mention of Asians, despite that they are somewhere between 15.5% to 17% of the state population.² Program goals includes the de-emphasis of Algebra for middle school and Calculus for high school. Under Equitable Math, all students must take the same level of courses up until the senior year. [1]: https://equitablemath.org https://equitablemath.org [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Americans_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Americans_in_California

spacecaps 5y ago
For anyone interested, I think it's probably worth actually digging into Equitable Math's "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction" [0]. I just skimmed some of it based on your link, and the majority of it just reads like "stop teaching math poorly." I was looking for some real burn-down-the-establishment stuff, but it's honestly pretty prosaic. For example: > "There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning." Probably most people would be on-board with the idea that concepts/reasoning are more important than blindly getting to the right answer, but "right" in quotes seems like a tell that some math-is-objective nonsense is on the way. Reading further, though, it turns out it's just talking about how word problems can be imprecise! > "Math is taught in a linear fashion and skills are taught sequentially without true understanding of prerequisite knowledge." This seems like the flexibility the other commenters are gunning for, even if California isn't on board with it. > "Rigor is expressed only in difficulty." I immediately thought, ugh, they're just trying to dumb everything down! But if we read further: > "Too often in math, we limit the definition of rigor to difficulty, rather than its full complexity including thoroughness; exhaustiveness; interdisciplinary; and balancing conceptual understanding, procedural skills and fluency, and application. This allows math teachers to shy away from complex problems and tasks and instead streamline teaching like we are spoon-feeding..." A thorough, conceptual understanding is superior to a surface-level ability to step through a process without understanding? Sign me up! I poked around for anything more aggressive, but from what I can tell that's generally the vibe of the PDF. Yes, the framing is unnecessarily antagonistic, but if we took the white supremacy dressings off of it I doubt the ideas inside would be divisive at all. Of course, I've only skimmed that one document! But if "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction" is this inoffensive I'm not sure where they're hiding the real good stuff. [0]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
- primitivesuave 5y ago
  Page 7 is where they completely lose me. "Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways" is a manifestation of white supremacy? If you click on that item, it takes you to a page where they suggest non-standard classroom activities like "Have students create TikTok videos, silent films, or cartoons about mathematical concepts or procedures." I'm pretty open minded about education pedagogy, but you completely lose me (and 99% of teachers) when you suggest creating TikTok videos so students can adequately express their mathematical understanding.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > "Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways" is a manifestation of white supremacy? “White supremacy” is an accurate but excessively polarizing term; “cultural favoritism in favor of status quo elites, whose preferences and cultural practices are encoded in the prescribed methods of demonstration” would perhaps both be less inflammatory and easier to see the connections between the specific practice and the broader problem. > I'm pretty open minded about education pedagogy, but you completely lose me (and 99% of teachers) when you suggest creating TikTok videos I think the particular examples are not because any of them are individually to be preferred but because providing a range including them illustrates the general principle, which is “provide students a broad set of mechanisms to demonstrate understanding rather than a narrow set of forms, as the latter introduces cultural biases based on comfort/familiarity with the form, both for the child immediately and among parents and the rest of the support network on which they rely.”
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      These kind of anti-solutions backfire. Say there's a real problem, the police are killing people. Instead of solving that... well few of us have any power over that, so instead we resort to changing things we do have power over. Like… watering down math classes and pretending that is even the thousandth thing on the list of solutions that should be tackled first as a response. It's so far down the list (and has better remedies) that it actually hurts the cause.
Gunax 5y ago
I read the first stride of [1]. This is going to be divisive. The recommendations are quite sane--seek student understanding over the correct answer, use examples students can relate to, etc. It's basically a few dozen pages of very sensible (perhaps even cliche) guidelines. But throughout it's couched language claiming the opposite is white supremacy. Eg. grades stress getting the correct answer over comprehension, and are part of a White supremacist model. I can allready see how the debate is going to end up, with each side talking past each other. The reformers will claim that the only reason you're opposed to it is because you support White supremacy. The traditionalists will say it's using race as a cudgel to silence opposition.
zarzavat 5y ago
It's all rather ironic because the only places in the world that seem to have this antipathy to mathematics are predominately "white" and anglophone. The rest of the world just gets on with it. There's nothing "whiter" than running scared away from mathematics.
cactus2093 5y ago
Is moving away from Calculus in high school such a bad idea? I took AP Calculus in high school and studied physics in undergrad so I've done a lot of calculus, but it honestly seems like a pretty niche subject when I think about it. It's hard to think of any times that it's applicable in my life any more. Some of the concepts are very beautiful, but a lot of things like the rote solving of integrals to get to a closed form solution can get pretty tedious and can be done by computers these days anyway. At the same time, I didn't take any statistics or computer science in high school and really only had my first introduction to programming in college. Both of these seem like topics that should be prioritized above calculus for most high school students.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  Mathematical Statistics typically requires Calculus, both as an institutional and pedagogical requirement. It is understandable that some students do not wish to pursue further mathematical studies, but should that translate into the requirement that all students must be at the same level? Or that Algebra shall not be offered in middle school? Note that schools are already free to offer Statistics or Computer Science, neither of which are respected by universities. It is very difficult to create a program with sufficient reliability that universities are willing to accept some form of credits earned or requirements met.

spacecaps 5y ago

For anyone interested, I think it's probably worth actually digging into Equitable Math's "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction" [0]. I just skimmed some of it based on your link, and the majority of it just reads like "stop teaching math poorly." I was looking for some real burn-down-the-establishment stuff, but it's honestly pretty prosaic. For example: > "There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning." Probably most people would be on-board with the idea that concepts/reasoning are more important than blindly getting to the right answer, but "right" in quotes seems like a tell that some math-is-objective nonsense is on the way. Reading further, though, it turns out it's just talking about how word problems can be imprecise! > "Math is taught in a linear fashion and skills are taught sequentially without true understanding of prerequisite knowledge." This seems like the flexibility the other commenters are gunning for, even if California isn't on board with it. > "Rigor is expressed only in difficulty." I immediately thought, ugh, they're just trying to dumb everything down! But if we read further: > "Too often in math, we limit the definition of rigor to difficulty, rather than its full complexity including thoroughness; exhaustiveness; interdisciplinary; and balancing conceptual understanding, procedural skills and fluency, and application. This allows math teachers to shy away from complex problems and tasks and instead streamline teaching like we are spoon-feeding..." A thorough, conceptual understanding is superior to a surface-level ability to step through a process without understanding? Sign me up! I poked around for anything more aggressive, but from what I can tell that's generally the vibe of the PDF. Yes, the framing is unnecessarily antagonistic, but if we took the white supremacy dressings off of it I doubt the ideas inside would be divisive at all. Of course, I've only skimmed that one document! But if "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction" is this inoffensive I'm not sure where they're hiding the real good stuff. [0]: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...

primitivesuave 5y ago
Page 7 is where they completely lose me. "Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways" is a manifestation of white supremacy? If you click on that item, it takes you to a page where they suggest non-standard classroom activities like "Have students create TikTok videos, silent films, or cartoons about mathematical concepts or procedures." I'm pretty open minded about education pedagogy, but you completely lose me (and 99% of teachers) when you suggest creating TikTok videos so students can adequately express their mathematical understanding.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > "Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways" is a manifestation of white supremacy? “White supremacy” is an accurate but excessively polarizing term; “cultural favoritism in favor of status quo elites, whose preferences and cultural practices are encoded in the prescribed methods of demonstration” would perhaps both be less inflammatory and easier to see the connections between the specific practice and the broader problem. > I'm pretty open minded about education pedagogy, but you completely lose me (and 99% of teachers) when you suggest creating TikTok videos I think the particular examples are not because any of them are individually to be preferred but because providing a range including them illustrates the general principle, which is “provide students a broad set of mechanisms to demonstrate understanding rather than a narrow set of forms, as the latter introduces cultural biases based on comfort/familiarity with the form, both for the child immediately and among parents and the rest of the support network on which they rely.”
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    These kind of anti-solutions backfire. Say there's a real problem, the police are killing people. Instead of solving that... well few of us have any power over that, so instead we resort to changing things we do have power over. Like… watering down math classes and pretending that is even the thousandth thing on the list of solutions that should be tackled first as a response. It's so far down the list (and has better remedies) that it actually hurts the cause.

Gunax 5y ago

I read the first stride of [1]. This is going to be divisive. The recommendations are quite sane--seek student understanding over the correct answer, use examples students can relate to, etc. It's basically a few dozen pages of very sensible (perhaps even cliche) guidelines. But throughout it's couched language claiming the opposite is white supremacy. Eg. grades stress getting the correct answer over comprehension, and are part of a White supremacist model. I can allready see how the debate is going to end up, with each side talking past each other. The reformers will claim that the only reason you're opposed to it is because you support White supremacy. The traditionalists will say it's using race as a cudgel to silence opposition.

zarzavat 5y ago

It's all rather ironic because the only places in the world that seem to have this antipathy to mathematics are predominately "white" and anglophone. The rest of the world just gets on with it. There's nothing "whiter" than running scared away from mathematics.

cactus2093 5y ago

Is moving away from Calculus in high school such a bad idea? I took AP Calculus in high school and studied physics in undergrad so I've done a lot of calculus, but it honestly seems like a pretty niche subject when I think about it. It's hard to think of any times that it's applicable in my life any more. Some of the concepts are very beautiful, but a lot of things like the rote solving of integrals to get to a closed form solution can get pretty tedious and can be done by computers these days anyway. At the same time, I didn't take any statistics or computer science in high school and really only had my first introduction to programming in college. Both of these seem like topics that should be prioritized above calculus for most high school students.

threatofrain 5y ago
Mathematical Statistics typically requires Calculus, both as an institutional and pedagogical requirement. It is understandable that some students do not wish to pursue further mathematical studies, but should that translate into the requirement that all students must be at the same level? Or that Algebra shall not be offered in middle school? Note that schools are already free to offer Statistics or Computer Science, neither of which are respected by universities. It is very difficult to create a program with sufficient reliability that universities are willing to accept some form of credits earned or requirements met.