Math Education is racist?

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by Horn6721, Nov 10, 2019.

  1. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    This is a WTH idea.
    "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.
    Seattle Schools Propose To Teach That Math Education Is Racist—Will California Be Far Behind?

    A quick glance at this should leave you:facepalm:
    https://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/socialstudies/pubdocs/Math SDS ES Framework.pdf
     
    • WTF? WTF? x 1
    • poop poop x 1
  2. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    Source civilizations for math:

    Sumerian—counting and very basic accounting

    Greek—geometry, logic

    Arabian—algebra

    Renaissance Italian (Venetian in particular)—more advanced accounting

    Germanic—Calculus

    Modern Germanic, American, and British—Advanced Topology, Statistics, Chaos, many other modern mathematical creations.


    Western Civilization was smart enough to adopt things that worked well, instead of rejecting them as strange, foreign, or forbidden knowledge (what much of the world did).

    Also note the source civilizations are either
    Western or Middle Eastern (which conquered big chunks of the West at times and from which much of the West originates).
     
    • Like Like x 2
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2019
  3. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    If you let leftists take over education, you'll get ****-shows like this.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
    • Winner Winner x 1
  4. HornHuskerDad

    HornHuskerDad 5,000+ Posts

    This can't be real - can it?
     
    • Like Like x 1
  5. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    Calculus is from England. I stand with Newton.

    Also, remember two tenants of Leftism (aka Communism, Socialism, Fascism) are irrationality and polylogism. It is the appeal to the subjective over the objective. Therefore objective truth or rationality is merely a tool of power to oppress people. There can only be what is true to you, nothing is true of itself. Attacking math is just this philosophy being carried out to its logical end. That is the irony.
     
    • Like Like x 1
    • Winner Winner x 1
  6. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    And the irony of it is that they claim to be the protectors of intelligence, reason, and science.
     
  7. Clean

    Clean 5,000+ Posts

    How long before sociology or African Studies can be substituted for math?
     
  8. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    The question is how to stop this?
    Power and oppression, as defined by ethnic studies, are the ways in which individuals and groups define mathematical knowledge so as to see “Western” mathematics as the only legitimate expression of mathematical identity and intelligence. This definition of legitimacy is then used to disenfranchise people and communities of color. This erases the historical contributions of people and communities of color.


    How can intelligent people allow this?
     
  9. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    Gottfried Leibnitz, from Leipzig, Saxony (Germany) was the (primary) father of calculus.

    To the extent the field has two fathers (Leibnitz and Newton), then the SJWs and leftists should double down on the study of Calculus in schools. It has two daddies--that's something they usually really like...
     
    • Funny Funny x 4
    • Like Like x 2
  10. I35

    I35 5,000+ Posts

    Here’s some math for you.

    2016 Election.

    17 states require photo ID. :usflag:
    Republicans 16
    Democrats 1

    18 states (require ID w/ no photo.) :usflag:
    Republicans 13
    Democrats 5

    15 states (no ID laws.). :brickwall:
    Republicans 2
    Democrats 13.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  11. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    What can be done? Recapture the academy and restore sanity. This will take decades, but it needs to happen.

    Re: how difficult this is, and how much insane resistance there will be, consider Texas' own Lee Bass. As a Yale alum, he tried to donate many, many millions of $$$ to set up a Western Civ. program at Yale. Yale turned him down!

    Yale Alumni Magazine: Bass, Yale & Western Civ (Summer 95)

    Yale to Return Bass' $20-Million Donation

    Yale to return $20 million to unhappy benefactor

    In the state schools, pressure governors to appoint sane regents. Regents hire sane presidents. Presidents hire sane faculty, etc.

    Raise massive $$$ for Hillsdale College and turn it into an Ivy League caliber institution. Promote the U. of Chicago heavily and ensure it doesn't get captured by the SJW freaks. Make, then keep, this sort of school fair and open to all sorts of perspectives and faculty. Show what a true college should be. Don't just be the right wing flip side of Berkeley, etc.
     
    • Winner Winner x 1
  12. Statalyzer

    Statalyzer 10,000+ Posts

    To attempt to make this relevant to this thread, let's pretend this is AP stats, where I would probably begin by asking "What standard did you use to label a state as either 'Democrats' or 'Republicans'"?
     
  13. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    It has to happen. However, as I've mentioned before, to make it happen, there needs to be a radical shift in how conservatives approach careers. We direct our kids into fields that make money - business, medicine, finance, engineering, accounting, etc. There's nothing wrong with those fields, but they don't influence public opinion and culture to a large degree. We need our kids to go into fields that don't make as much money but that do impact opinions and culture - public education, journalism, college faculty (and in areas dominated by the Left), etc.

    In addition, there needs to be a coordinated effort to promote this. If those who make huge money don't want their businesses nationalized and seized in 30 years, they need to incentivize conservative families to do this. If you're a conservative who wants to be a public school teacher, a journalist, or a history professor, it should be damn near free for you to go to college, because guys like Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Bros, etc. are throwing money your way.

    This is outrageous, and it's just sloppy work from the Right. We have conservative governors in states all over the country, and we'll have university administrations that look like the Berkeley City Council. Screw that. Get real regents with balls, shitcan the freaks and diversity czars, and send them home.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
  14. I35

    I35 5,000+ Posts

    I think you just flat out missed the point. That’s the results of the colors voted for with the amount of states in the 2016 Presidential election. This isn’t divided up by the color of the state. It’s divided up by three categories which is the following.

    1). State law for ID with Photo (17 states)
    2). State law for ID with no photo required (18 states)
    3). State doesn’t require any ID. (15 states).

    Color is the results on who won by those rules.

    The math is in the numbers. I know it was a stretch, but I still love pointing out that those numbers reflect on how important it is to have laws with IDs for elections.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2019
  15. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    @ Deez:

    I would agree, and I'm not even a conservative. However, I abhor the one-sided academy that is frankly becoming rather Stalinist and anti-free speech. Right now, the academy is dominated by the leftists. If it were dominated by the rightists, I'd feel the same way.

    I wouldn't want U. of Chicago, Hillsdale, or any of that sort of place (a "conservative" school) to be one-sided or anti-free speech either. Like I said, the worst thing they could do is become a right wing flip side of Berkeley. All universities should strive to present and allow a multitude of viewpoints and an open exchange of ideas--that's how new knowledge is created.

    For now, to balance things out, the Universities should actively recruit high quality conservative faculty. Perhaps, to show other viewpoints, Hillsdale should actively recruit some leftists, as should U. of Chicago (maybe that's how Obama came to be a professor there, who knows?).
     
  16. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    The Federalist Society is an example of a highly successful decades long mission. As far as I know, it's just in law and Constitutional study. From what I've seen, they intentionally bring together differing viewpoints for their debates and online publications. They should be commended and mimicked in that regard by institutions all over the political map.

    If you can't take differing viewpoints, perhaps your own viewpoint isn't so strong.
     
  17. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    This leftist capture the academy bullsh&% is right out of the Trotsky and Stalin playbook. (not hyperbole)
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  18. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    " If you can't take differing viewpoints, perhaps your own viewpoint isn't so strong. "
    This^

    But then you have irrational leftist people who are not interested in a different viewpoint.
     
  19. I35

    I35 5,000+ Posts

    If they were rational and logical they wouldn’t be democrats.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
    • Winner Winner x 1
    • Hot Hot x 1
  20. LongestHorn

    LongestHorn 2,500+ Posts

    • poop poop x 2
  21. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

  22. LongestHorn

    LongestHorn 2,500+ Posts

  23. nashhorn

    nashhorn 5,000+ Posts

    Misleading!
     
  24. mb227

    mb227 de Plorable

    Essentially no different than the crap being proposed on the Left Coast...and at least it appears to require some manner of religious belief to support the claim. This could actually INCREASE the manner of critical thought on the part of students even if it ALSO requires the teacher to pay heed to a different religious credo...

    There are NOT that many issues of science where believing in some magical sky fairy is going to result in different outcomes than what MOST of us learned through the basic education as well as college/post-graduate studies.
     
  25. mb227

    mb227 de Plorable

    Left-tards tend to excel at the misleading...it helps keep rational people from actually catching up with the stupidity being foisted upon the nation by the likes of AOC and the idiots on the other coast...
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  26. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    I read the bill. It doesn't do what the critic suggest. It makes quite clear that "grades and scores shall be calculated using ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, including any legitimate pedagogical concerns, and shall not penalize or reward a student based on the religious content of a student's work."

    Could a kid state that in class or in homework that his religious belief is that the earth was 10,000 years old? Sure, but if that's all he did and just blew off the curriculum, he could absolutely be penalized. So no, it doesn't allow students to be "wrong" on science.

    And just for the record, I'm a creationist, but I'm not a young earth creationist. I think that's pretty absurd and not because I blow off the book of Genesis. You can believe the book of Genesis and still know the earth is billions of years old. Having said that, I don't see the harm in someone buying into young earth creationism. People believe goofy stuff all the time. Hell, Muslims think they get to bang 72 virgins if they are martyred during jihad. Should we force them to refute that in class or penalize them if they make that argument? No, even though that goofy belief is radically more dangerous than a someone buying into young earth creationism.
     
  27. Garmel

    Garmel 5,000+ Posts

    Gee, LongestHorn produced more fake news. Who woulda thunk it?
     
    • Funny Funny x 1
    • Winner Winner x 1
  28. Chop

    Chop 10,000+ Posts

    If you're convinced on religious grounds that the Earth is only X years old, then coach your kids to simply write: "According to mainstream scientists..." as a preface to any homework or test answer that contradicts your (and presumably your kids') belief. Problem solved.
     
    • Winner Winner x 1

Share This Page