Posted on 07/10/2023 7:40:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Few subjects seem less political than math. There is little room for subjective judgment because its truths are universal. No matter what you look like or where you’re from or how you feel about it, two plus two will always equal four, and the area of a circle will always be π r². Math is so objective, in fact, some scientists have theorized that prime numbers could offer the basis of communication with supposed intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos.
However, even if aliens know that math has no racial or gender bias, some educators on Earth seem to think otherwise. Even amid plummeting math scores in the latest Nation’s Report Card data, a growing chorus of progressive voices insists that racism and sexism are the biggest problems we face in how to teach math.
A couple years ago, in an article in the Scientific American, Rachel Crowell complained about the racial and gender disparities among those who make a career out of mathematics. She pointed out, for instance, that “fewer than 1% of doctorates in math are awarded to African Americans” and that only 29.1% “were awarded to women.” More mathematicians, she writes, have been pushing to discuss these issues and “force the field to confront the racism, sexism and other harmful bias it sometimes harbors.”
Though, undoubtedly, examples of identity-group bias in all fields exist, Crowell chose to root her complaint in intangibles: Math doctorates are not “earned” or “received” or “completed;” they are “awarded,” a word choice that not so subtly reinforces her conclusion that something about math education is racist.
Writing at Newsweek, Jason Rantz cited examples of public schools teaching students that math itself, and the way it has always been taught, is oppressive. In Seattle, recently introduced guidelines for K-12 math teachers in several pilot schools claim that “mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture” and that “math has been and continues to be used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.”
In 2021, Oregon’s Department of Education introduced a new toolkit called A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, created by what Rantz calls “a coalition of left-wing educators.” The toolkit promises “an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and [m]ultilingual students in grades 6-8.” It also warns teachers that “[t]he concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” and that “[u]pholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
This ideological trend in which everything is read through lenses of oppression and victimhood is not isolated in extreme, left-wing enclaves but has become widespread in education. Given the “Critical Theory mood” inflicting Western culture today, it is only likely to grow in the coming years.
One of the many problems with this obsession with racism and oppression in math is that it inevitably leaves students worse at math. In the case of the Seattle pilot schools, for example, performance among black students in the state math exam plummeted after implementing the woke curriculum. Bad ideas with good intentions are still bad ideas. In an effort to empower students, they are instead radically disempowered.
The wonder of mathematics lies precisely in its objectivity, as Melissa Cain Travis describes in Thinking God’s Thoughts, in the miraculous way that math corresponds to and describes the world around us. In her book, Travis chronicles how the beauty and objectivity of numbers led 16th century German astronomer Johannes Kepler to discover the three laws of planetary motion and to correctly describe the structure of our solar system. Kepler, as much a student of God as he was a scientist, believed that the truths of numbers were eternal, existing eternally in the mind of God and structuring all of reality. Our minds — as beings made in God’s image — are uniquely suited to unlock those mysteries.
Students who are taught that answers to algebra problems depend on the color of their skin and that calculus professors are oppressors are not only not going to unlock the mysteries of the universe, but they will also believe what is not true about who they are and the world in which they live. Woke educators may hope to liberate students. But by depriving them of objective truths they are subjugating them to bad ideas. It’s a tragically ironic and disastrous miscalculation.
Originally published at BreakPoint.
John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics.
Shane Morris is a senior writer at the Colson Center, where he has been the resident Calvinist and millennial, home-school grad since 2010, and an intern under Chuck Colson. He writes BreakPoint commentaries and columns. Shane has also written for The Federalist, The Christian Post, and Summit Ministries, and he blogs regularly for Patheos Evangelical as Troubler of Israel.
I have that on a t-shirt. Every so often someone gets it and comments.
Algebraic topology in the sixth grade is a bit much.
If you haven’t started teaching yourself a lot of math while you are in high school, you aren’t going to be a serious math type. Ramanujan had a late start and even he couldn’t make it.
“Ghetto Math Proficiency Exam”
City of New York, Borough of Bronx
High School Math Proficiency Exam
Name:____________________ Gang:_________________
1. Darnel has an AK-47 with a 40-round clip. If he shoots 13 times during each drive-by shooting and misses 6 out of 10 shots, how many drive by shootings can he attempt before he has to reload?
2. Jose has 2 ounces of cocaine, and he sells an 8-ball to Jackson for $320 and 2 grams to Little Mikey for $85 per gram. What is the street value of the balance of cocaine if he does not cut it?
3. Rufus is pimping 3 girls. If the price is $65 for each trick, how many tricks will each girl have to turn so Rufus can pay for his $800 per day crack habit?
4. Dino wants to cut his half-pound of heroin to make a 20% profit. How many ounces of cut will he need?
5. Willis gets $200 for stealing a BMW, $50 for a Chevy and $100 for a 4x4. If he has stolen 2 BMWs and 3 4x4s, how many Chevys will he have to steal to make $800?
6. Raoul is in prison for 6 years for murder. He got $10,000 for performing the hit. If his common law wife is spending $100 per month, how much will be left when he gets out of prison, and how many years will he get for killing the bitch for spending his money?
7. If the average spray can covers 22 square feet and the average letter is 2 square feet, how many letters can a tagger spray with 3 cans of paint?
8. Hector knocked up 6 of the girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in the gang. What percentage of the girls has Hector knocked up?
Your math book is a good one.
Percent problems were in basic math at my high school, and were some of the hardest problems the kids had to cope with. We took each section in basic math as individual study with lots of help, to pass the class the kids had to pass each section The other hard part was fractions.
By the way, since one half is the same as two quarters, I allowed both answers to be correct unless the problem asked for lowest terms. My belief is that asking for lowest terms is a teacher’s gimick to make grading easier, and may have led to the idea that there are multiple answers which is false except for this case where I believe two fractions that are equal are also equally correct.
Math should never be boring, but you are correct, this aspect is up to the teacher, and lots of teachers know how to make a subject boring.
The problem with math being intimidating to students is two fold, (1) if you never learned why math problems require what they require you just don’t know what you don’t know. and (2) If you tell your friends you don’t get math and they agree, well then it becomes something you can bond over. I believe lots of people do this brecause its easy and friendly. But it would be so much better if we could have students help each other.
Differential Equations is. It differentiates and that is racist.
How many blacks entered the doctoral programs in math? How many women? Doing so is a CHOICE. Did so few CHOOSE to do so?
Most excellent
You da man.
True that
To”get math” you have to do the homework. If you don’t work the problems (all of them) you’re lost
Bwahahahaha
My 8th grade class in 1958 consisted of 14 boys and 16 girls. Our math teacher ranked the class in math every quarter (he read the ranking aloud to the class). Every quarter the top 10 spots were held by boys.
That does not mean that girls are dumb. I believe that if our English teacher had ranked the class, the results would have been reverse than the math. It simply means that girls and boys are different. A fact that liberals deny.
“Planer” is the definition of circle. The locus of point IN A PLANE equidistant from a central point. If you leave the plane, you begin to define a sphere.
If people want to remain ignorant, I wish them well.
Someone should put that statement on a billboard.
Agreed 100%.
And those students convince themselves they aren't capable of understanding math. They believe the better math students are naturally better at math.
Truth be told, some students are quicker at it. They can visualize it, and they pick up on it more easily... maybe because they were introduced to it early on.
But, all students can do well in math with study and practice.
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