Posted on 09/16/2014 5:02:58 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
According to a Teach for America website, culturally responsive teaching in math is important because “math has traditionally been seen as the domain of old, White men.”
white privilege and prejudiceAs reported earlier this week, Teach for America groups across the country are committing themselves to “culturally responsive teaching,” a radical pedagogy used by communist Bill Ayers and other blatant anti-American indoctrinators.
The site, Culturally Responsive Teaching, Teach for America, says that because math is seen as a domain for old, white men, many students cannot identify with it. Therefore, educators should find ways to relate math to the lives of their students.
Judging from the math curriculum recommended, this TFA group, like all other social justice educators, wants minorities to believe that what relates most to their lives in America is racism and oppression.
For example, the site recommends “Critically Conscious Mathematics” and “Radical Math.”
Radical Math was created by educator Jonathan Osler several years ago while teaching at El Puenta Academy in New Jersey. Osler taught Radical Math along-side Cathy Wilkerson, a former member of the Weather Underground Organization (with Bill Ayers) who once participated in a plot to detonate a nail bomb at a dance for military personnel at Fort Dix.
Radical Math provides hundreds of social justice math lessons obviously meant to indoctrinate. For example, lesson titles include “Sweatshop Accounting,” “Racism and Stop and Frisk,” “When Equal Isn’t Fair,” “The Square Root of a Fair Share” and “Home Buying While Brown or Black.”
Today, Osler is director of the San Francisco Teacher Residency, a teacher training and job placement program created by the San Francisco Unified School District and Common Core assessment creator and validation committee member, Linda Darling-Hammond.
Astonishingly, in proudly promoting ‘cultural competence’ and ‘critical consciousness’ in education, the TFA website’s home page links to a Wikipedia definition of critical consciousness that describes it as a concept developed by Paulo Freire and grounded in post-Marxist critical theory.
As recently reported, the site also contains letters from 5th grade students asking text publisher Houghton Mifflin why they did not include in their textbook the fact that Christopher Columbus ‘burned, slayed and hanged’ Native Americans who would not find gold for him.
In keeping with their racism-of-evil-white-men theme, the site uses a story, involving racism against African Americans, of course, to suggest that the idea that math is neutral, rational, and logical is a myth and the premise that 2 + 2 = 4 is “naive.”
Here’s the story:
… a European explorer (presumably Francis Galton, the man who invented eugenics) agrees to trade an African shepherd two sticks of tobacco in exchange for one sheep. When he offers four sticks of tobacco in exchange for two sheep, however, the shepherd declines; the explorer later tells this story as evidence of the shepherd’s inability to comprehend simple mathematical reasoning and as “proof” of intellectual inferiority on the African subcontinent. But, if sheep are not standardized units, as there is no reason to believe them to be, then doesn’t it make sense that the second sheep might be worth far more than the first? And then doesn’t our premise of 2 + 2 = 4 look awfully naive?
If Teach for America, as a whole, does not agree with the content of this particular website that bears its name, now would be a good time to say so. Although TFA’s reputation has not been stellar as of late, the ideals and methods expressed in this particular website are beyond fringe, not to mention senseless.
Lol...with these folks he’ll be “the smart one”...
And black men escaped Africa and were given an chance to succeed in this country...which the majority of them rejected...so they could stay in this country and pine for the old country and the old ways...without actually seeking to return to the old country.
Ohh, DD - you got me cacklin’ good on that one - thanks!
Like Einstein? Feynman? Those old white guys?
I teach 5th grade math. It is amazing how much the “proper way to teach” has changed since I learned as a 5th grader myself. Every lesson has to be a dog and pony show now because certain groups “don’t learn like you did.” Excuse me, but they don’t LEARN like we did because they do not BEHAVE like we did! In every lesson I have to plan a physical movement every 10 minutes because the student population of my school are “physical learners.” Even though it is in my written plans those physical movements rarely seem to make it into the actual lessons. :-)
Except these are the fumbducks that become out rulers.
Thank you. So it would appear. I guess the concept is Hindu, but the word is Arabic. Apparently the Mayans independently also arrived at the concept.
Very interesting. I never got over “set theory”.
Do you think your students are learning math with these latest methods?
Producing parts to a .0005" variation in pitch of thread and size is the requirement. Tens of thousands are produced, by hand, one at a time. And that is just the math the person needs to know who makes the bolts.
Liberals are so effing stupid in their quest to be so smart.
yeah... who needs to be all smart and shee-it
This enables all those beautiful people of color clustered in the cities to get food that someone else has harvested, big screen televisions that someone else has built and even the electricity to run those televisions which someone else has generated.
Where would they be without it?
Coincidental to the appearance of a very significant Person around Year "0" ...
Only old white men would argue about who first came up with nothing, and in what century AD. I guess the evidence shows that several ancient peoples independently came up with nothing.
This doesn’t change my opinion that “Ground Zero” was a bad choice of words.
2+2 will always equal four, no matter how much mental illness says otherwise
Nature is but the mathematical thoughts of God. - Euclid
Quannel Y has two ho's named Chaniqua and Rhodesia. Chaniqua weighs 155 lbs and Rhodesia weighs 255 lbs. If the max quantity of cocaine recommended for women is 2 grams for every 10 pounds of body weight, then how many kilos of blow will you axe your homies to pick up for a big party weekend?
(NOTE: The word "quantity" means "amount")
That’s true of all the sciences.
Hope they’re not carpenters at the least.
Rufus be pimping for three girls. If the price be $65 for each trick, how many tricks will each ho have to turn so Rufus can pay for his $800 per day crack habit?
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