California Tries to “Cancel Math Class”
wsj.com
wsj.com
I'm all for social equality and getting rid of racism (i.e. the horrible practice of discriminating against people, even implicitly, on the basis of race), but calling out "objectivity" and "either-or thinking" as characteristics of white supremacy seems way over-the-top.
Either we teach people from the Western tradition of pedagogy, or we don't. But deconstructing the basic tenets of western philosophy and calling them "white supremacist" is absurd.
It also distracts from what actually hurts people of color and other marginalized groups, thus perpetuating the problem.
This was actual state policy towards blacks and people of color in Apartheid South Africa. The denial of a traditional mathematics education to everyone should be a crime.
However, I think some of the comments here are a little off-base and miss out on some of the better ideas proposed.
For instance, the curriculum doesn't actually seem to say that students shouldn't show work or that there isn't a "right answer" but rather that teachers should allow (even encourage) students to explore multiple approaches to arrive at a solution instead of enforcing the idea that there is only one right way to do things. Note that you can still have a "right answer" which can be obtained in multiple ways. This is coming from the second manual:
https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
As someone who researches and teaches computational mathematics at a university, I think this approach is really what we should be encouraging. After all, this is the way in which mathematics is actually practiced. Of course, this also requires teachers to be able to understand and teach multiple approaches to the same problem which is another can of worms, and it is probably the biggest source of frustration for students when this isn't the case.
They leveled it and staked out the elliptical shape. I'm a very poor judge of size, but something made me suspicious and I brought out the measuring tape. Did a little calculation based on the formula for the area of an ellipse. It was 30% smaller than the contract bid.
There was a couple pallets of bricks for it in the street. I measured a brick and did a little multiplication, and discovered that the quantity of bricks matched the measured size, not the the contract bid.
I called them up, and they denied it, then said they'd made a math mistake.
Baloney. They were trying to cheat me. I hypothesized that they'd discovered that few people noticed when they oversized the square footage in the contract, and they kept going further and further with that, and expected to get away with being a full 30% off.
Knowing a bit of high school geometry paid a big dividend that time for me.
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/index.asp
As for some specific items that have come up and and elsewhere on the internet, no, California is not advocating for eliminating calculus from the curriculum. This is discussed in Chapter 8. This is an open discussion of whether or not students should be pushed to get into calculus by grade 12. Part of the thinking is that it's possible, but the students end up with some very shallow understanding of the material. Meaning, they can compute a u-substitution, but don't really understand what a derivative or integral means. They may be better off getting a better foundation and then taking calculus in college rather than just pushing for calculus. Other options are discussed on line 340.
No, California is not advocating eliminating gifted programs. This is discussed in Chapter 1 starting around line 415 and intersects with comments about calculus. It does offer a discussion about whether or not tracking kids into gifted programs does them more harm than good in some situations because priority can often be given towards keeping up with advanced topics rather than deeper understanding. Other organizations such as the MAA also have opinions on this.
And, look, I'm not contending that anyone here needs to agree or disagree with the proposals from California. However, I will strongly contend that there's a lot of anger against something that really does not exist in the form that is editorialized. The editorial freely picks and chooses quotes out of context and freely mixes them some with truths and some with lies, which makes it truly exhausting to dissect.
Download Stride 1, go to page 66.
That section, though a bit loopy, is not about basic math. It's about data science, stats, and word problems. Areas well open to interpretation. Other portions are like this too. I'd disagree with the headlines, but the foundational ideas and workbooks are okay to my eyes (I'm not a teacher, so I may be missing big stuff). On having many answers, consider an abacus instead of paper. That's the stuff they are talking about.
They state this:
"Of course, most math problems have correct answers, but sometimes there can be more than one way to interpret a problem, especially word problems, leading to more than one possible right answer.
And teaching math isn't just about solving specific problems. It's about helping students understand the deeper mathematical concepts so that they can apply them throughout their lives. Students can arrive at the right answer without grasping the bigger concept; or they can have an “aha” moment when they see why they got an answer wrong. Sometimes a wrong answer sheds more light than a right answer."
The authors have ~5 hours of videos explaining these workbooks. I've not watched them though.
The parent article is 'clickbait'/fake-news (from what I can see before the pay-wall).
The material and what the authors are saying seems, to my quick glance, to be as boring as the math classes I remember (though strangely worded).
What about the contention in Stride 1 that "either-or thinking" and "objectivity" are tenets of white supremacy?
That's an absurd assertion; if we accept it as true, that cuts the pillars from underneath pretty much all western philosophy. I suspect that's one of the goals of this organization; otherwise, why wouldn't they say otherwise? They don't specify what their philosophical foundation is, so I think we have to assume this assertion is both intentional and strongly indicative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
As an example, page 21 states:
White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when...
Language acquisition is equated with mathematical proficiency.
Instead...
A common misconception is that students who are negotiating language are unable to communicate their mathematical knowledge. This reinforces quantity over quality when teachers reduce math teaching to things that are more easily measurable, like literal math. This not only denies opportunities for more engagement with more rigorous math, but it also creates a dynamic of paternalism where teachers are deciding for students what math they should interact with, without true consideration of the student’s experience. The idea that mathematics instruction has to happen separately from language reinforces either/or thinking rather than considering how they interact with and build upon each other.
I see your point about "either-or thinking". One could also call that "black and white thinking" (not referring to skin colors) -- an approach to a given situation that refuses to see nuance.
However, mathematics is an area where either-or thinking has its place. Either a given mathematical statement or proposition is true, or it's not.
The paper fails to acknowledge this important nuance... and in my opinion, falls into its own form of either-or thinking: anything that has been taught or learned by white people is suspect.
The terms used in the engagement section of this resource are ideas presented in the dismantling Racism workbook (2016) notebook, grounded on the work of Jones and Okun (2001). It is important to read this article first to fully understand the terms that are identified as characteristics of white supremacy culture in organizations. We contextualize these ideas into the math classroom to make visible how white supremacy culture plays out in these spaces.
https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/fil...
With respect to Either/Or thinking, it is defined on page 5:
Either/Or Thinking
• things are either/or, good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us
• closely linked to perfectionism in making it difficult to learn from mistakes or accommodate conflict
• no sense that things can be both/and results in trying to simplify complex things, for example believing that poverty is simply a result of lack of education
• creates conflict and increases sense of urgency, as people are felt they have to make decisions to do either this or that, with no time or encouragement to consider alternatives, particularly those which may require more time or resources
antidotes: notice when people use either/or language and push to come up with more than two alternatives; notice when people are simplifying complex issues, particularly when the stakes seem high or an urgent decision needs to be made; slow it down and encourage people to do a deeper analysis; when people are faced with an urgent decision, take a break and give people some breathing room to think creatively; avoid making decisions under extreme pressure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle
If we falsely assume that there are only two holes when there are more, proofs based on this assumption will not be true. I'll also contend that the concept of Either/Or does not refer to the logical disjunction, similar to a programming or. It's a different idea and not what these documents are referring to.
But, really, you don't need to take my word for it. The authors do define what they mean by each of these terms in the above document. I will contend all of these documents need to be considered together in order to understand what California is proposing.
The intentions behind this effort seems to be to promote math that a more diversity of people can culturally relate to. It tries to address problems that today probably makes teaching math to diverse people both difficult and inefficient. The premise is that current practices have evolved in a niche culture, thus more optimized for that niche and not directly translateable to all the diversity of cultures that exists.
However, it makes assumptions and focus around one "problem", which is kind of asking: "When did you stop beating your wife?". The references to "White supremacy culture" raises an indefensible dilemma, being itself racist and discriminatory.
Especially when the focus is so narrow and one-sided, ie. Page 11:
> PREPARE STUDENTS OF COLOR TO CLOSE THE GAP IN ACCESS TO STEM FIELDS
* Teach students of color about the career and financial opportunities in math and STEM fields.
* Encourage them to disrupt the disproportionate push-out of people of color in those fields.
* Invite leaders and innovators of color working in STEAM fields to meet your students.
The stance and focus seems to also be about rooting out negativity, but this can be said of every problem in society and is not an constructive approach in bridging gaps. Statements and mission goals such as these are just dead ends and require circular reasoning to uphold:
> “We live in a toxic culture that affects us all; one dynamic of the culture is that we are discouraged from seeing it. One of our tasks is to learn to see our culture and how it teaches us to make normal that which is not and should never be normal.”
So although you can try to "fix problems" this way, what one inevitably ends up doing is reinforcing all the divisions and problems and make them much larger and insurmountable than they need to be.
It's kind of condescending although they are right: Different people require different approaches for learning better. This goes for all genders and "races" though!
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/05/alarming-c...
It wouldn't surprise me if the whole woke culture was dreamt up by China/Russia, or they seized upon it seeing it as a way to gain an advantage. Clever really, I'll give them that.
Which is exactly why this is not about "gifted" students (whatever that means), but about a lot of students that are interested in math and science and would like to be prepared for first year courses that expect them to at least have exposure to calculus.
To put it in context, California was the state that was looking at stripping the requirement for passing Algebra II as a condition of graduating from community college a few years ago:
https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-intermediate-a...
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-area-leaders-c...
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/01/24/42658513/seattle...
This scares and angers me in a way that I am struggling to express.
https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa...
My suspicion is that the woke know very well that their ideology is very brittle. Maybe it wasn't in the beginning, but by now it has been embellished by so many absurdities that even Titania McGrath cannot keep up.
And the only way how to avoid the explosion and crash of the brittle ideology is never to confront it with logic and critical thinking. Which you only can do by associating rationality with the worst possible label, racism. Some people will do anything not to be labeled racist.
Of course, if the woke can really get away with that, China will eat Western Civ alive. Without the scientific method, West is just a random bunch of mostly Indoeuropean-speaking territories. We were once the boring backwater of the world. We can return to that state again.
What do all ideologies say to the god of reality ? "Not today"
Which means that any movement that grows consists of ever more below-average people. There is no movement of more than a few thousand people which is significantly above average unless a ridiculously high cost is paid for this to happen.
Therefore any theory that has political parties on board in any country is very accomodating of idiots. Half of them are idiots.
While half of everyone in a country must be unconditionally at or below average within the country that does not imply the same results hold conditional on party membership.
I can't speak to the 'high cost' comment other than to suggest maybe look at medians in addition to modes.
Take "getting the right answer".
The full statement in the Equitable Math document is: """There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning."""
It explains: """Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict. Some math problems may have more than one right answer and some may not have a solution at all, depending on the content and the context. And when the focus is only on getting the right answer, the complexity of the mathematical concepts and reasoning may be underdeveloped, missing opportunities for deep learning."""
It instead argues that math educators should "Choose problems that have complex, competing, or multiple answers" and "Engage with true problem solving".
Finally, it comments: """Of course, most math problems have correct answers, but sometimes there can be more than one way to interpret a problem, especially word problems, leading to more than one possible right answer. And teaching math isn't just about solving specific problems. It's about helping students understand the deeper mathematical concepts so that they can apply them throughout their lives."""
Or, here's the context around "linear fashion": """Math is taught in a linear fashion and skills are taught sequentially without true understanding of prerequisite knowledge"""
with commentary: """While some mathematical skills and concepts build off each other, the forced construct of linear teaching reinforces objectivity. A prime example is how matrices is considered a precalculus standard, even though the only math skill needed as a prerequisite is arithmetic. This is highly detrimental to students because they are systematically deprived of knowledge they could access due to false constructs. Math teachers have internalized the sequences that have been predetermined by standards and textbooks, rather than sequencing learning based on (pre)requisite knowledge. In general, teachers teach math like a ladder rather than a web. """
The actual context for "show their work" is "Students are required to “show their work” in standardized, prescribed ways.". The problem is "that can center the teacher’s need to understand rather than student learning. Teachers should seek to understand individual student perspectives and focus on students showing their work in ways that help students learn how to process information."
Frankly, I think those observations and commentary are correct, and the WSJ op-ed piece was deliberately constructed to scare and anger readers without being informative.
This is primary/secondary school mathematics, not cutting edge mathematical research, and there quite clearly is a right and wrong answer for simple, commonly used mathematics of that nature.
Moreover, it's unclear what's wrong with "perpetuat[ing] objectivity"; most people here on HN would describe objectivity as a good thing.
Just how certain are you that all problems posed in primary/secondary school mathematics quite clearly have a right and wrong answer? Judging on my own experience, you aren't correct.
My point was to highlight how the WSJ op-ed was overly selective quote mining. You appear to be objecting to how one quote uses the term "objectivity". You likely know there is no simple definition of what "objectivity" means, yes?
If not, see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-objectivity/ for a lengthy discussion focused just on scientific objectivity, in the introduction writing "The ideal of objectivity has been criticized repeatedly in philosophy of science, questioning both its desirability and its attainability" and saying in the conclusion "In each case, there are at least some reasons to believe that either science cannot deliver full objectivity in this sense, or that it would not be a good thing to try to do so, or both."
Equitable Math specifically uses the description from Jones and Okun (2001), and links to https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/fil... .
The first of these is "the belief that there is such a thing as being objective"; a belief which I pointed out "has been criticized repeatedly" and that likely cannot or should not be achieved in science. (See "positivism", "postpositivism", and "interpretivism" in case you find it hard to get to sleep.)
Other characteristics from Jones and Okun include "invalidating people who show emotion" and "the belief that emotions are inherently destructive, irrational, and should not play a role in decision-making or group processes."
I do not invalidate BitwiseFool for showing emotion ("scares and angers me"). Nor do I think others on HN would regard BitwiseFool's emotions as destructive or irrational.
I therefore believe that most people on HN do reject "objectivity" as used by the authors of Equitable Math.
While you may dislike the authors' definition of "objectivity", I don't think it's appropriate to dismiss their work based on a tangential quote I pasted here. Consider how confusing is it that in math a set can be neither "closed" nor "open" yet in normal a door is typically either "open" or "closed", or perhaps "ajar."
The answer to "should you switch in the Monty Hall problem" is very much "it depends how you've worded it", and that's a valuable skill we need children to have.
Understanding is more important than memorization.
Yes the solution to all learning problems is more intelligent teachers. We know. This has been shown many times. The quality of teachers matters more for educational achievement than the difference between a city-center public school and a private Montessori school. Obviously that doesn't scale and will never be the experience of more than a tiny minority of kids.
Not 3rd grade.
Following an algorithm is not memorization.
Might be an adhd thing though. Different people learn in different ways.
Practice is how we cement things into our minds and get good at them. Of course it is repetitive and boring.
Someone could teach you how to throw a basketball into a hoop. Want to get good at it? Repeat it 30,000 times, not 100.
When it became time for me to implement division for the 8086 processor, I implemented the exact same long division algorithm I was taught in 3rd grade, except using binary rather than base 10. Shift-subtact-add.
https://github.com/DigitalMars/dmc/blob/master/src/CORE16/LM...
Did it again to create the floating point emulator.
https://github.com/DigitalMars/dmc/blob/master/src/CORE16/FL...
It turns out there are faster algorithms (see Hacker's Delight), but those aren't very amenable for pencil and paper.
Another way to frame that is to learn how to follow an algorithm. There is great value in that. Creating one's own algorithms is much more advanced, and builds on the foundation of knowing the existing algorithms.
"""Elsewhere, I have argued that the practice of school mathematics in the US regulates the child by privileging: ... the ‘standard algorithm’ over invented or international algorithms; ... Not only can these repeated practices over a lifetime serve to dehumanize students and teachers in classrooms, the narrative about mathematics being a pure discipline, reflective of the natural world around us, universal, with an almost unilaterally positive relationship to society’s advancement, leaves many humans unable to challenge this narrative to consider other ways of doing mathematics.” (Gutierrez 2017)
That's still teaching that algorithms are something that can and should be followed, just arguing that teachers shouldn't privilege one standard algorithm.
This echoes complaints about teachers insisting that their students follow one algorithm to multiply (like, say, by the counting-intersection method shown at https://www.careerbless.com/maths/speedmaths/dbl.php ) and who give no points to students who already know and prefer long multiplication.
Juxtaposing "privilege" and "standard" seems redundant?
1. learning a standard algorithm gives people a known solid basis
2. it improves communication when people have a common understanding
3. the student knowing an alternative algorithm doesn't impair him from learning the standard one
There are several ways to teach children to multiply. Which is standard? Indeed, different places privilege different algorithms. I mentioned the counting-intersections method. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_algorithm says England and Wales use the grid method.
As the first document at Equitable Math points out, "The point should be to have a dialogue about their process and their learning, not require every student to follow the exact same path to the right answer. ... The child of immigrants might have learned a different way to solve a problem because that’s how their parents were taught where they grew up. If we just tell that student their way is the wrong way, we risk turning them off to math for life."
So if someone from the UK comes to the US, and uses the grid method to get the right method, instead of long multiplication as I learned it in the US, and the teacher gives them a zero and says it's the wrong way, because it's not the standard way .... is that really good pedagogy? Or is it more likely to discourage the student?
Or, a couple months back there was a link here about indigenous students in Alaska who natively speak a base-20 language. As I recall, it was more effective for them to learn math in base-20, and then learn base-10, than to follow the standard route of teaching math in base-10.
Do you really disagree with this viewpoint from Equitable Math, or is your complaint with my pull quotes, which necessarily omits context?
I don't see any problem with a teacher saying "this is the algorithm I'm going to teach" and testing them after teaching it. I don't see how that discriminates or hurts anybody. If they know another way, so what? If they can learn that way, they can learn another way.
> because it's not the standard way
"Because it's not the algorithm I'm teaching" is not unreasonable. I never got bent out of shape by a teacher/prof saying "this is the way we're going to do it." I just did it that way. I wasn't being oppressed.
Suppose a teacher decides everyone must learn the counting-intersections method in order to learn to multiply. One of the students already knows long-multiplication and can even multiply two-digit numbers in her head. And she thinks that drawing all those lines and counting intersection is a boring, tedious, useless way to multiply.
She gets all of the answers right, and is the first to finish. But she gets a zero, because she didn't do what the teacher taught.
Is that good pedagogy?
Is it teaching mathematics? Is it encouraging the child to learn more math? Or is it (as the text argues), more likely teaching conformity to the power structure, and possibly demotivating the student?
The argument is that not everyone is like you; not everyone can fit into the power structures at school which unnecessarily and even subconsciously reflect the dominant culture. The argument is that teachers who are aware of these issues may be more likely to educate a wider range of students.
Your frame it in provocative and loaded terms like "privilege", "dominant", "pedagogy", "power structure", etc. I don't view mathematics through your lens at all.
Can you reframe my scenario with a framing you like?
Teacher A wants students to learn principle X. Teacher uses method M to do so. Student B already knows principle X, via method N.
Teacher says student's method N is wrong, because it isn't method M, and gives student B a poor grade.
Student B becomes demotivated, and doesn't care so much about learning principles Y or Z.
Teacher A wants students to learn principles Y and Z.
What framing would you use to describe this situation? Do you think teacher A should change their teaching style?
In the document I referred to, method M is the standard way taught in the US, method N is the standard way taught in another country, and student B is an immigrant child who learned method M from B's parents before teacher A taught it in class.
In my scenario, method M is a very visual technique for multiplication used for early learners, and method N is the standard way taught to more advanced learners in the US.
There's a cavalcade of non-sequitur woke logic in the Introduction to the official draft proposal. Feel free to read it. But the WSJ article is just another culture war hit piece that barely tries to critique the substance of the proposal, which notwithstanding the voluminous justifications are fairly simple on their face. Because they're simple they should be easy to attack on their own terms. But no one group can stake a claim to rhetorical laziness, and so it's rare to see anybody put in the effort.
Anyhow, I'm pretty sure the proposal is a done deal. And in the grand scheme of things I doubt it will matter. The reason the proposal is wrong-headed is because no amount of curriculum tweaking could ever begin to overcome the deficits that a child may suffer from outside school--family, community, etc. Decades of public school investments and analyses have borne this out time and again. But by the same token, a kid benefiting from a more supportive home and peer environment is unlikely to be ill effected.
Though, the second order effects might be real, such as an increase in private school attendance. The Catholic parochial schools in San Francisco have grown continuously for many years. (They're much cheaper than secular private schools; often a bare majority or less of the kids are Catholic.) Something like 25% of SF students go to private schools. My kid goes to a Catholic school (partly for legitimate religious reasons), but it was a close call, and we almost sent him to our neighborhood public school. He attended public T-K in SF and we were very happy w/ his teacher and his school. One thing to understand about public schools in California is that they're extremely balkanized. The requirement that all public schools across the state receive identical funding has had the unintended side-effect of increasing parental involvement in those communities where parents are relatively more predisposed to do so, often donating a tremendous amount of time and money. (There are apparently various ways that additional money is used to enhance education without running afoul of budgeting rules.) It's not just an economic class thing as in San Francisco poor and working class Asian families are just as or more likely to involve themselves w/ their children's school as any well-off family in Marin. Private school principals and teachers elsewhere in the U.S. accustomed to dealing with aggressively demanding parents would feel right at home at plenty of public schools in California.
That's the curriculum that is being proposed.
The usage in those publications is entirely unsurprising given the themes and overall narrative. But the absence of their literal usage in the formal draft curriculum is presumably deliberate. Sort of like the way a proposed Civil War curriculum in Texas or Alabama might conspicuously avoid literally saying something like, "the Civil War was fought over states' rights, not slavery". Which, BTW, is something my Florida public high school history teacher actually said in the 1990s as part of his bespoke Civil War curriculum. Even though the subtext was there in the presentation to some degree, the material itself was mostly benign, so it actually did matter somewhat that he said that explicitly.
Some background on myself: I'm a Latino with a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Math.
I'm very good at math. Less so now but I was absolutely in the "gifted" category with math. I took a math minor because I wanted more classes I'd enjoy and knew it would help my GPA because I've aced every math class I've taken. I'm literally an A-plus math student.
So is math racist? Well it's never called me any names, so I'd say no.
Are they trying to say that "correct" is now "wrong"? No.
However, what we're talking about here is math INSTRUCTION and the culture in which we're teaching math.
Ultimately what they're attempting to address is that the way math is being taught is not reaching many students of color and white students as well!
We've been taught that rote memorization and the correct answer is the end-all-be-all, but consider the student that just memorizes but doesn't understand, or another that gets the correct answer because they made two mistakes that cancel out or the student that understands, but made an off-by-one error.
The first student will never see how this applies "to the real world" and gives up on math as interesting. Or will grow up, like many, and never know how to apply math to situations. I know friends who have "pi-r-squared" but can't find the diameter of a beach ball given a string and a measuring tape. Or they bemoan "why didn't they teach us how to do taxes???" but never understand that they were taught percentages!
The second student is worse off. They just got there by luck and that luck eventually runs out. Then math will seem arcane and mysterious. They'll say it changes and doesn't make sense. They won't learn the beauty in logical steps.
Finally, the last student, the one closest to understanding and being good at math and could even be great at math, is given a point off; just "wrong".
The way math is taught and the way we even do math isn't set in stone and can evolve. We adopted Arabic numerals because they were superior to Roman numerals. We adapted the concepts of zero, and infinity, and the concept of infinitesimal, and computer-assisted proofs when at one point they were rejected by the "math community" (or whatever that looked like at the time).
There's nothing to say that the precise way we teach math is the absolute best that there can be.
I'm assuming that like many others here, "showing your work" was the worst part of math. But reason why because teachers only cared if you approached math in the way that they understood and had taught it.
I never memorized my "times tables" because I hated rote-based math. Instead, I had internalized the concept of associativity (at the time I didn't know the name for it). So while I didn't (and still don't) have 7x8 memorized, I know 7x7 + 7 is the same, and that applies for any larger number. So while others couldn't multiply 21x21 in their head, because it was outside the range of their "times tables", I could.
I would get into fights with my math teachers constantly in elementary because my mind made leaps their teaching didn't or wouldn't account for. I matured and learned in middle and high school to backtrack and show the "baby steps" for my teacher's sake and ultimately my own sake. Our current way of teaching doesn't meet everyone's needs and doesn't encourage a deep understanding of math, its benefits, its application, and its development.
Our country bemoans how there's a STEM-shortage, but we won't analyze that there might be different and better ways (or worse ways!) to communicate math because we think it would disrupt the idea that there's only one way to do math.
Now is this (https://equitablemath.org/faq/) the right way to do that? I don't know. Probably not, but I'm also not an educator. What I can see is that the US is doing an abysmal job of teaching math and an even worse job of teaching to everyone equitably and we have to change that somehow.
> Ultimately what they're attempting to address is that the way math is being taught is not reaching many students of color and white students as well!
So why does this curriculum use that notion? Only to evoke unnecessary emotion and outrage? Now the people who disagree with it have to waste time and energy deflecting against baseless accusations of racism.
In this case, the editorial provides numerous references. Read the references and form your own opinions.
What is this nonsense?
> The Pathway offers guidance and resources for educators to use now as they plan their curriculum, while also offering opportunities for ongoing self-reflection as they seek to develop an anti-racist math practice. The toolkit “strides” serve as multiple on-ramps for educators as they navigate the individual and collective journey from equity to anti-racism.
> For decades, America’s schools have tried and failed to close gaps on math test scores between White students and students of color. That’s not because math discriminates by race, and it’s not because some groups of students are inherently more suited to math. It’s because we give students of color and students from lower-income families the least access to critical resources, from the most qualified teachers to the best technology to the most advanced courses. And it’s because instructional materials and practices—even good ones—are influenced by culture and perspective.
Is it just me, or does that sound pretty reasonable?
Addressing challenges faced by children who grow up with poorer or less educated parents is fine. I do not see why race is brought into the discussion, other than to grab attention, at which I guess it was successful.
It's not hard to make a connection between, say, an actually racist issue like redlining and how it affected the development of neighborhoods, and the subsequent lack of local funding for educational programs in the affected neighborhoods.
It sounds like you are claiming that everything in the linked article is false.
That seems to oppose equity with anti-racism. I thought that those were supposed to be the same destination.
We should be careful to draw conclusions only after reading the source material that the opinion piece is quoting from.
As soon as I read the editorial I felt upset, confused, angry- and that of course is how I was intended to feel. A hit piece like this is perfectly designed to trigger you.
What’s really dismaying is that so many seemingly rational people here on hacker essentially fell for it.. You let them take your rational mind and replace it with a vehicle for propagating the priorities of the author of the article. And it’s so, so easy for that to happen. It’s happened to me.
And once you’ve fallen for something like this, it’s very, very hard to admit that you’ve been had.
Its well documented in Thucydides Greek classical texts.
Gotta get those clicks. You’re being manipulated.
Stop lying.
I think the authors are wrong in several ways, but this is a tempest in a teapot and designed to generate outrage.
And it’s working too!