Posted on 10/24/2017 9:14:39 AM PDT by Mr. Mojo
A University of Illinois math professor believes that algebra and geometry perpetuate “white privilege” because Greek terms give Caucasians unearned credit for the subject.
But that isn’t the professor’s only complaint. She also believes that evaluations for math proficiency perpetuates discrimination against minority students, if they do worse than their white counterparts.
Rochelle Gutierrez argues in a newly published math education book for teachers that they must be aware of the identity politics surrounding the subject of mathematics.
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” she argues with complete sincerity, according to Campus Reform. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”
Gutierrez argues that subjects like algebra and geometry, which relate to arithmetic, also perpetuate racism and white privilege. She worries that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”
Gutierrez claims that the importance of math skills in the real world also places what she calls an “unearned privilege” for those who are good at it. Because most math teachers in the United States are white, white people stand to benefit from their grasp of the subject disproportionate to members of other races.
“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, raising the question as to why math professors get more grants than “social studies or English” professors.
“If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned,” she says, claiming that minorities “have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms… [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.”
To resolve the intelligence gap, Gutierrez calls on math professors to develop a sense of “political conocimiento,” a Spanish term for “political knowledge for teaching.”
She concludes her argument with the claim that all knowledge is “relational,” or is, in other words, relative. “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”
Those who can...do. Those who can't...teach. Those who can't teach...write.
I enjoy hardware and software engineering. I enjoyed teaching, but the "doing" role pays better. I'll continue that as long as I can tolerate the 50 to 70 hour weeks. My students from 1980 to 1983 landed good jobs. Some of them showed up at my computer center as techs for IBM and DEC.
0.002-1+1=0.002 dollars, or two tenths of a cent.
Re: Hidden Figures. It tells it all that black empowerment types haven’t embraced the story of these three wonderful, accomplished women. Is it because they accomplished what they did by reaching their full potential, and not making excuses and backing down when things didn’t go 100% their way?
Aren’t Asians “minorities” ?
They have no problem with maths. On the contrary, they surpopulate STEMs in universities and business, even more had they not been constrained by affirmative action favoring blacks and hispanics.
Asians are such a thorn in the foot of the race baiters’ narrative.
At the U of I it is called the Board of Trustees. If the gal has tenure, there probably isn't much they can do. If she doesn't have tenure there probably isn't much the BOT can do either. Obtaining tenure is mostly left to the professors peers. Sounds like this gal's theories would work quite well at North Carolina and the NCAA would concur..
Unfortunately, in many schools, when black kids do well, their peers put them down for being too white.
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I used to hear it frequently in my classroom until I started writing them up for saying it.
Said no Asian, ever.
The useful idiots that help the despots into power will no longer be useful to the cause and be the first to go
So why is it that so many Indians (Asian, not American) are good at math? It’s a rare college these days that doesn’t have an Indian professor in mathematics or computer science?
It's not just math, they're generally better in academic subjects across the board, which is why, in California, Latino politicians try to circumvent the state constitution and set up racial quotas, quite illegally.
Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
Alan D. Sokal
Department of Physics
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
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