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I think your point about the choice of words is a good one, and perhaps verified by many of the comments people made about the original article. A poor choice o

I think your point about the choice of words is a good one, and perhaps verified by many of the comments people made about the original article. A poor choice of words can do more harm than good. For instance, it's a bad sign when a slogan or phrase associated with one point of view is used in political ads by people with opposing points of view. This often happens when we get angry about injustice, or when we think someone is making a mistake. The anger leads us to responses amounting to whacking someone upside the head, rather than responses which might make things better. When you teach, you find out that people will not learn things by being shamed, guilted, or insulted. But when you're angry, it can be hard to resist the temptation to vent your anger rather than trying to make things better. (And to be sure, sometimes forceful action is the best thing.) Maybe (to use your words) the Durham statement should have been titled "Creating a Rich, Historically Interesting, and Cosmopolitan Mathematics Curriculum".

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
> it's a bad sign when a slogan or phrase associated with one point of view is used in political ads by people with opposing points of view. This is a great observation that I'm going to remember. Incentives are an issue. Within academia or the arts, say, an individual has every incentive to be "provocative" within their ideological bubble, even if the outcome of this internal status-seeking is a left-politics that is completely unpalatable to anyone outside that bubble. Now right-parties are beating left-parties over the head with the words of their own activist wings. I contend that the academically-trendy "anticolonialist" rhetoric is exactly such an outcome. (In fact, it's more than that; the CCP propagandists love it.) Indeed, you can be sure that the person who posted this article had right-sympathies. Because publicizing this sort of thing benefits the mainstream right, not the mainstream left. I think many people in mainstream political parties do understand this -- for example, in American politics, the word you'll hear from Democrats is "progressive", which (while not completely free of problematic history), is not remotely so violent a phrase. > Maybe (to use your words) the Durham statement should have been titled "Creating a Rich, Historically Interesting, and Cosmopolitan Mathematics Curriculum". Thank you. That's why I offered it!

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

> it's a bad sign when a slogan or phrase associated with one point of view is used in political ads by people with opposing points of view. This is a great observation that I'm going to remember. Incentives are an issue. Within academia or the arts, say, an individual has every incentive to be "provocative" within their ideological bubble, even if the outcome of this internal status-seeking is a left-politics that is completely unpalatable to anyone outside that bubble. Now right-parties are beating left-parties over the head with the words of their own activist wings. I contend that the academically-trendy "anticolonialist" rhetoric is exactly such an outcome. (In fact, it's more than that; the CCP propagandists love it.) Indeed, you can be sure that the person who posted this article had right-sympathies. Because publicizing this sort of thing benefits the mainstream right, not the mainstream left. I think many people in mainstream political parties do understand this -- for example, in American politics, the word you'll hear from Democrats is "progressive", which (while not completely free of problematic history), is not remotely so violent a phrase. > Maybe (to use your words) the Durham statement should have been titled "Creating a Rich, Historically Interesting, and Cosmopolitan Mathematics Curriculum". Thank you. That's why I offered it!