Posted on 11/10/2019 7:39:16 AM PST by robowombat
Seattle Schools Propose To Teach That Math Education Is Racist—Will California Be Far Behind? by Lee Ohanian
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
California’s latest K–12 test scores were released earlier this month. Despite spending 26 percent more per pupil after inflation since 2011, test scores remain low, and improvement is proceeding at a glacial pace. Just 40 percent of California schoolchildren are proficient at math. What should be done? Seattle’s idea is to teach their students that US math education is racist, is used to oppress people of color and the disadvantaged, and has been used to exploit natural resources.
According to Seattle educators, math instruction in the United States is an example of “Western Math,” which apparently is the appropriation of mathematical knowledge by Western cultures. While everyone agrees that two plus two is four, three times three is nine, and that there are three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle, Western Math critics worry about more nuanced issues, such as why we teach kids Western counting and not, for example, how the Aborigines count.
Apparently, ancient cultures also used different terminology to refer to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may have focused on geometric shapes different from triangles and circles. They may have called the degrees in a circle something other than degrees. And now it seems that math education—in all of its abstraction—should become culturally and socially focused away from those Westerners who coopted it.
Seattle’s new proposed math curriculum will take US public school math instruction where no one has gone before.
Students will be taught how “Western Math” is used as a tool of power and oppression, and that it disenfranchises people and communities of color. They will be taught that “Western Math” limits economic opportunities for people of color. They will be taught that mathematics knowledge has been withheld from people of color.
If you are struggling to understand the logic of this, you are not alone. For the life of me, I don’t know how the Pythagorean theorem, for example, or Euclidean geometry, more broadly, oppress people or communities of color, or how these foundations of mathematics have been appropriated by Western culture.
In fact, I really doubt that anyone whose foremost interest is in culture—Western or otherwise—thinks much about Pythagoras or his famous theorem and whether the relationship between the sides of a triangle denigrates people of color or has been used to promote WASPs and the wealthy.
Seattle’s proposal implicitly claims that it will be more successful in teaching math. Perhaps, but I am unaware of any compelling evidence supporting this view. And I see no reason why telling kids that they have been oppressed by “Western Math” would lead to better learning outcomes.
For example, would anyone understand geometry any better if they knew that Pythagoras may have been a vegetarian, or that he may have practiced mysticism? (I am assuming that these two practices are outside mainstream Western culture, but then again, maybe the West has appropriated veganism and mysticism? This is really making my head spin.)
Would kids learn how to tabulate numbers more effectively if teachers spent weeks describing the history and use of the Chinese abacus?
Seattle’s idea about racist math education will be right up California’s alley. Last August, California educators released a draft of a statewide ethnic studies curriculum for public comment.
The California curricular proposal also focuses on racism and is heavy on ideology, with pot shots taken at most anything and everything “Western.” Take for example capitalism. In one of the most uninformed economic criticisms I have ever seen, the proposal states that capitalism is a tool for power and oppression (sound familiar?), which fits right in with Seattle educators.
Just how bad is California’s student math performance? You can judge for yourself, based on the following question that was asked to 11th graders: Add the square root of 16 and the third root of 8.
The square root of 16 is 4 (4 x 4) and the third root of 8 is 2 (2 x 2 x 2). Four plus two is six. Doable for a 17-year old who has been taking mathematics, yes?
No. Only about 37 percent of students answered the question correctly. This percentage is not much above 25 percent, which would have been the number of correct answers if students had simply randomly guessed from the four possible answers provided. We had better either improve math education pronto or start to recruit better-trained students to the state.
There is a better way to help California’s kids succeed at math than to go down the road of racism and identity politics. Simply reintroduce the principles of math education used in the state before the development of Common Core curriculum.
Before Common Core, California had its own mathematics curriculum written primarily by Stanford University Mathematics Department faculty.
An independent review of California’s pre–Common Core math curriculum gave it a grade of “A” and noted, “If any state has math standards right, it’s California. The Golden State’s standards avoid almost all the pitfalls of other states. . . . All in all, the state has a top-notch blueprint for mathematical excellence.”
But as education experts have noted, the Common Core math curriculum was never developed to be on par with best-practice international standards, nor did Common Core provide adequate coverage of K–12 math topics.
It is not racism nor the appropriation of mathematical knowledge by Westerners that is the reason for deficient math learning by our children. It is something much simpler. It is a poorly designed math curriculum that the state mistakenly adopted. It is easy to improve.
Improving outcomes is easy in principle. Change the curriculum and add teachers who know how to teach math. But sadly, at least in California, this will be almost impossible to implement in practice.
If anything, math skills can get a person a better job and overall better life. I can’t figure this out (pardon the pun).
Sooner or later. You have a real test where nonsense don’t fly
SAT. GRE A job application
They won’t hire you and you can scream “ racist “! And they WONT CARE
also. PUNCTUALITY
Already happening everywhere. Employers bemoan the lack and go
H1v
We already are. Seattle is overrun with Indian and Communist Chinese. Maybe they are proposing to teach it the Indian or Communist Chinese way— where cheating and copying is allowed?
I used those calculators too, the TRS 80 had some features that other programmable calculators did not have, like testing a solution and one click back to the equation. I thought of that as a great learning tool.
You are also right about what has been lost. As a math teacher, I felt embarrassed taking my calculator out because I was so slow doing math in my head. I knew others who could do very large problems in their head and get answers that were close enough to be the basis for an engineering trade study.
Funny thing about the early math, after teaching it for 9 years, I could recall how to do every problem and often could recall the “trick” that a student needed to get to the right answer quickly. I cannot do the really hard ones, like you see on youtube, but the SAT test questions are not a problem anymore, and I suspect I could figure out the height of a tree. Students can learn the same things we learned, if asked to do the same problems. The solution is in how math is taught, and how much the teacher knows about the math they are teaching.
When I taught I had several rules regarding phones (that all have cameras and calculators in them) and the high end calculators. I would not allow “assistance devices” in a class that did not need one, and when I tested I made certain that the problems could all be solved without the need of a calculator. In many classes, the equation could be used in lieu of the numerical answer and I always gave credit for equal answers. 1/9 is really the same as 14/126.
However in the advanced computer class, we had to teach how to solve problems with these devices, so of course they were allowed,
The biggest problem I had was the personal camera, I had a test that was given to all students in every math class of the same subject and an enterprising student photographed each page of the test and then emailed her solutions to her friends in classes that had not been tested. The school should have solved this by having several equivalent tests made and not using the tests over in a later class. In the end, we had to zero the score of several students who had missed the same problems as the girl who passed out her answers.
If you take all the young-uns in Calif and Wash out of the employment market because they can’t add or subtract, there will be more jobs for those who do, do math. Not much of a downside.
But the bottom line is, the socialists are trying to drive our American children crazy with endless hate-white-people crap. So they are paralyzed in fear and incapable of defending themselves, much less others, from an outside attack. From people who do know math. And which sex they are. And what day of the week it is. And there is a huge downside to that.
when I returned to school my first work study job was assisting students with learning disabilities in the math and reading labs. Up until that time I had assumed that our minds all worked in basically the same way. But I discovered immediately while tutoring that this was not the case.
Within a short time a work study job opened up at the computer lab at the business center which was more in line with my interests, but what I learned trying to help people with learning disabilities was helpful to me there as well.
I had taken the firefighter civil service test twice before, but each time there were around 5000 test takers for about 30 jobs over three years. At that time half the jobs were set aside for affirmative action and veterans got a several point advantage, so it was a fairly futile exercise. But the format of the written test was changed that year to make it less “discriminatory” toward women and minorities. It was very similar to an SAT which my year back in school had sharpened me up for. So my education was cut short once again when I was hired by the fire department after getting a near perfect score.
I would have to say that what I learned assisting other students in my work study jobs was actually more valuable in my career as a fire officer than what I learned in the classroom. I also gained a healthy respect for the challenges that teachers face... especially math teachers. So thank you for your patience and service to your community.
You also learned that the best way to learn is to teach, But this only works when you understand what your are teaching. Good story. Congrats on making the grade.
I agree with you.
I worked as an engineer in aerospace and as a teacher and coach. The teaching job was far more enjoyable but at the same time not in line with my political beliefs. If and when they find out that you support the President, even if your teaching is perfect — and like everyone else, I made mistakes.
As they say, do what you love and you will not have to go to work at all. I only quit when my health forced me to.
Good FReeping with you. KC
Good Lord. I’d heard about them saying math was racist, now they’re saying that teaching math is racist?
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