Posted on 02/19/2021 6:44:54 AM PST by SJackson
In a February 2021 bulletin sent out by the Oregon Department of Education, just below a feature on Black History Month, is a notice announcing a “micro-course” for educators titled “A Pathway to Math Equity.” The course promises to provide educators with “key tools for engagement [and] strategies to improve equitable outcomes for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students” and knowledge on how to “dismantle racism in mathematics instruction.”
One might well ask, how can math—which more than any other subject deals in the realm of pure logic—possibly be racist? The “toolkit” provided as a resource for the first course session is happy to answer this question.
“We see white supremacy culture show up in the mathematics classroom even as we carry out our professional responsibilities” explains the guide. Educators must therefore take on the responsibility for “visibilizing the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.”
These “toxic characteristics” include basic academic principles such as:
The focus is on getting the “right” answer.
Teachers are teachers and students are learners.
Independent practice is valued over teamwork or collaboration.
Students are required to “show their work.”
Grading practices are focused on lack of knowledge.
“Real-world math” is valued over math in the real world.
Students are tracked (into courses/pathways and within the classroom).
Participation structures reinforce dominant ways of being.
The toolkit goes on to state that “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
The course also contains numerous suggestions for educators who want to fight racism in their math classrooms. These include:
Adapt homework policies to fit the needs of students of color.
Expose students to examples of people who have used math as resistance. Provide learning opportunities that use math as resistance.
Identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.
The course materials repeatedly echo the tropes of critical race theory, insisting that “only white people can be racist in our society, because only white people as a group have that power.” Another section of the workbook asserts that “In some cases, the prejudices of oppressed people (‘you can’t trust the police’) are necessary for survival.”
If Oregon’s educational bureaucrats truly want to improve the education of African-American students, this racist exercise in lowering expectations and subverting classroom norms is a dismal place to start.
“Glad I won’t be around in 50 years when...”
When I need a brain surgeon who graduated from one of THOSE schools!!
“Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
You should see how subjectivity factors into open conflict!
You can count on your fingers and toes. The problem arises when an eight piece meal comes with 4 biscuits and the customer asks for four extra. How many biscuits do you put in the bucket. 7? 9? 8? No matter. Except to the employer and the customer.
I think the selection of math to screw up....is based on the fact that few black math instructors exist, and it’s kinda dominated by either whites/Asians (in some states, it might 98-percent). Same way in chemistry/physics.
We’ve gone from Ayn Rand to Orwell to Idiocracy in a month.
Search “color revolution” and you will see these same tactics over and over again. The issue is never the issue, it’s always the revolution.
Insane!
Try this with the IRS and you will end out in jail.
I'm sure that as you are enveloped in a plasma arc flash you can take enormous comfort in knowing that Ohm was wrong and your woke instructors were right.
Math is not open to interpretation.
It is a fixed fact of nature.
The simplest fundamentals are as important as complex formulas.
There was a time when we discussed the importance of being able to speak propped English in the work environment.
Do we have to explain this regarding math also? Denying the set principles of math dooms students to failure.
“Class. Who can answer this question?”
“How many illegal aliens can you fit in a 50-foot semi-trailer?”
“Anyone?”
“No one? Ok...the answer is zero. Yes, that was a trick question. Remember, El Presidente Jose Biden has outlawed the words ‘illegal alien’.”
Here you are, Shanice, your week’s pay at the new Biden rate of $15/hour. You worked 32 hours and your check before deductions is $380.
Every time I want to criticize corporate America for pushing the U.S. government to approve more H1B visas for foreign STEM professionals, a story like this comes up that pretty much vindicates them.
One great irony is that Western Civilization would never have advanced as far as it has if it has been exclusively “white” and European. We’d still be living with 17th-century technology were it not for the dramatic leap in human development that took place when “Western Civilization” adopted the Arabic numbering system and Persian mathematics to replace the antiquated Roman system of numbers.
Of course not!
We go through the pockets of other cultures for lose bits knowledge we can exploit.
Any black leaders who actually care about their people should speak out loudly against this nonsense. Good black parents already fight the “bottom up” notion that any effort to do well in school is “acting white”...now these idiotic woke leftist are undermining education from the top down. If this was a racist effort to destroy the black community, could it be done any better?
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