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When Rebecca Pariso agreed to join a team of educators she said she expected some controversy. “We were transforming math education, and change is hard and scary,” said Pariso, a math teacher at Hueneme Elementary School District. “Especially if you don’t understand why that change needs to occur. But I didn’t expect it to go this far.” Every eight years, a group of educators comes together to update the state’s math curriculum framework. This particular update has attracted extra attention, and controversy, because of perceived changes it makes to how “gifted” students progress — and because it pushes Algebra 1...

A rare manuscript by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein goes under the hammer in Paris on Tuesday, with auctioneers aiming for a stratospheric price tag. The manuscript, containing preparatory work for Einstein's key achievement the theory of relativity, is estimated at between two and three million euros (2.3-3.4 million), according to Christie's which is hosting the sale on behalf of the Aguttes auction house. "This is without a doubt the most valuable Einstein manuscript ever to come to auction," Christie's said in a statement. The 54-page document was handwritten in 1913 and 1914 in Zurich, Switzerland, by Einstein and his colleague...

A hearing officer at a Nevada community college has ruled against a professor who says the school is trying to fire him for standing against weakening math standards. In a report issued November 12, Truckee Meadows Community College Special Hearing Officer Vicky Oldenburg found that math Professor Lars Jensen violated several school codes when he protested a new curriculum structure that essentially allows remedial math classes to count for college credit. The report brings Jensen one step closer to being fired with cause. The report will now go to a faculty panel that will vote and write up its own...

A California math teacher is under fire after she was filmed donning a feather headdress and doing a bizarre 'Native American' dance for her students. Footage of John W North High School math teacher Candice Reed donning feathered headgear while chanting 'SOH CAH TOA' -a mnemonic for remembering the definitions of the trigonometric functions sine, cosine, and tangent- has gone viral. The video was posted to Facebook on Wednesday by Shadae Johnson, a member of the Urban Indigenous Peoples Advisory Council Member in Vancouver. Johnson said the footage was filmed on Tuesday by a Native American student in Reed's math...

The University of Oklahoma wants to hire an assistant professor that has a 'culturally responsive and sustaining mathematics pedagogy.' Though the listing does not specify a salary, the Glassdoor jobs platform estimates a comparable position at the university earns around $83,000. The University of Oklahoma is seeking a mathematics education professor versed in “equity and social justice.” The incumbent will teach within the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, which according to the job posting, “aspires to become a diverse and inclusive community of learners who engage in transformative scholarship with and in communities to advance justice and promote human dignity.”...

Does the average person have any idea what is now considered “normal” in the field of K-12 education? I already had some misgivings after reading Jay Schalin’s devastating review of the curricula in education schools: The Politicization of University Schools of Education: The Long March through the Education Schools. Nevertheless, I was unprepared for what I recently heard in a 2019 speech by a leader in math education, Deborah Loewenberg Ball. While the talk is now two years old, it is very unlikely that her perspective has improved. Ball’s credentials place her at the apex of the education world: she...

NEWS PROVIDED BY Bakuage Co., Ltd. Jul 07, 2021, 03:00 ET SHARE THIS ARTICLE TOKYO, July 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- - Highest Prize for Any Unsolved Problem in Mathematics - Bakuage Co., Ltd. headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, announced on July 7, 2021, that it is offering a prize of 120 million Japanese yen (*) to anyone who has revealed the truth of the Collatz conjecture, an unsolved mathematical problem. (*) 120 million Japanese yen is about US$1,085,000 (1US$=JPY110.50 as of June 29, 2021). Image: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M106706/202106236656/_prw_PI1fl_dI1163aV.png - What is Collatz conjecture? The Collatz conjecture is one of unsolved problems in mathematics....

The three-body problem, which has been a focus of scientific study for over 400 years, represented a stumbling block for famous astronomers such as Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler. Scientists at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have found a solution to one of physics' greatest questions in a paper published this month. The paper, published in Physical Review X, focuses on the three-body problem, which concerns the orbits of the Sun, Earth, and the Moon. While in a binary orbit system consisting of two celestial bodies, the orbits can be accurately predicated mathematically, while the complex interactions of a three-body problem...

OREGON—Oregon high schools have removed requirements to learn reading, writing, math, and basic social skills for kids graduating and moving on into the real world. The reason, according to one Oregon school board member, is to make sure they aren't influenced by far-right misinformation present in Thomas Sowell books, Jordan Peterson books, and other Nazi-adjacent authors. "We have to protect these kids," said Dr. Ethan Bremington (they/them), a superintendent of one Portland high school. "They were learning to read and going off and reading unapproved material. We really hoped they would use their reading skills to read The Communist Manifesto...

An alarming discovery out of Baltimore City Schools. Project Baltimore has obtained student assessment data that North Avenue does not release publicly. That data shows some students who could soon graduate, are performing at an elementary school level, academically. Project Baltimore, over the years, has heard from many parents who say their children are being pushed through Baltimore City Schools without getting the education they need. Julie Gaskins told us back in 2018 that her seventh grader was doing math and reading at a second-grade level. Project Baltimore also spoke with Gregory Gray, a Baltimore City Schools father, back in...

An ancient clay tablet shows that the Babylonians used Pythagorean triples to measure accurate right angles for surveying land.Students may not believe that Pythagoras’ Theorem has real-world uses, but a 3,700-year-old tablet proves that their maths teachers are right. The artifact, named Si.427, shows how ancient land surveyors used geometry to draw boundaries accurately. Discovered in central Iraq in 1894, Si.427 sat in a museum in Istanbul for over a century. Now, mathematician Dr Daniel Mansfield from the University of New South Wales, Australia, has studied the clay tablet and uncovered its meaning. “Si.427 dates from the Old Babylonian (OB)...

The International Space Station consists of 16 linked habitats, strung with solar arrays, space debris shielding, and a robotic arm, all spread over an area about the size of a football field. Yesterday, the entire assembly began to tilt and tumble after a newly-arrived Russian module malfunctioned and began firing its thrusters uncontrollably. Only the rapid response of flight controllers in Moscow and Houston, and of the 10 astronauts onboard, kept the $1 billion space lab on course. “We proceeded to do headstands and cartwheels,” Zebulon Scoville, a flight director on duty in Houston during the episode, said in a...

Math is racist. (At NASA, Creola Katherine Johnson performed critical astrophysics calculations on the fly which other engineers couldn't do, while computers were still punch-card input, as portrayed in the film Hidden Figures -- movie trailer.) Music notation is racist. (Don't listen to the music of African-American classical composers William Grant Still, Florence Price or Samuel Coleridge Taylor. Don't listen to "Akinla" from Fela Sowande's African Suite.) African classical composer Fela SowandeRabid fears of racism in serious academic work just happen to correspond to educational planning goals rolled out 5 or 6 lifetimes ago. What we would call socialism in...

Well good, we won’t have to think for ourselves anymore. Joey and the gang will do that for us.And as every middle school student knows, the Constitution – the document of negative liberties (h/t: BHO) – does not give you the right to think for yourself. So yay! – now we can rely on the Ministry of Misinformation (MOM) to tell us who and what to believe. MOM will be working with a small cadre of unelected private officials who run all the big powerful tech platforms to decide who and what is deemed acceptable truthiness. And don’t worry, it...

It looks like the post-modern lot has finally reached what many would think to be a sacred science that usurps the boundaries of racism, equality or wokeness: mathematics. In Ontario, students in Grade 9 are now being taught about the “subjective” nature of math, including the historical use of math to “normalize racism”, according to the Toronto Sun. Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced last year that changes in Ontario’s curriculum are inclusive of a ‘subjective’ and ‘decolonial’ approach to mathematics, the report says. The Ontario Ministry’s website says “an equitable mathematics curriculum recognizes that mathematics can be subjective”. The post...

The California Board of Education is set to postpone implementing a proposed overhaul of its mathematics curriculum during a Wednesday meeting after opponents argued the plan could harm students by needlessly inserting politics and social justice initiatives into lessons, Fox News reported on Tuesday. The board apparently intends to delay a final decision on the curriculum to next May. "California is on the verge of politicizing K-12 math in a potentially disastrous way,” Dr. Williamson M. Evers, a senior fellow of the Independent Institute, said in a statement. “This postponement means the State Board of Education has heard the message...

The Oregon legislature passed SB 744 to get rid of math, reading, and proficiency standards for high schools so we can be more “equitable.”

Educators around the US have come out to condemn the 'Dismantling Racism in Mathematics' programIt centers around a workbook which asserts that asking students to find the correct answer for math problems is inherently harmful for minoritiesSo far, the workbook is being used by school districts in Georgia, Ohio, California and OregonCritics say to it actually reinforces negative stereotypes and drives wedges between students according to their race'The workbook's ultimate message is clear: Black kids are bad at math, so why don't we just excuse them from really learning it,' one critic said The program was funded through a $1million...

It's increasingly clear that traditional school subjects are dripping with racism, white supremacy, and the patriarchy. We need to toss those problematic subjects and replace them with things that are woke, inclusive, and a whole lot more fun. Here are nine problematic school subjects and what we should replace them with: Replace Math with Advanced Oppression Score Calculation -- Instead of adding up racist numbers, add up intersectional numbers to see how oppressed you are. Much more inclusive! Replace Gym with Anti-Fatphobic Body-Positive Words of Affirmation Training - Everyone will just sit in a room and whisper words of positivity...

Educators around the country have come out to condemn a 'Dismantling Racism in Mathematics' program which tells teachers not to push students to find the correct answers to math problems because doing so promotes white supremacy. The program is centered around a workbook for teachers entitled 'A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction' which asserts that America's education system – even mathematics instruction – reinforces the dominant power structures of white colonizers. Grading students, asking them to show their work, requiring participation and even pushing them to get the right answer are depicted in the workbook as harmful to minorities. The...