Scientific American Goes Woke
michaelshermer.substack.com
michaelshermer.substack.com
I clearly remember being asked the what I enjoyed reading at my interview/visit to MIT in 1969. I explained that I read Scientific American every month, virtually cover-to-cover. I had been doing that since seventh grade after school in a neighborhood public library.
The public schools I attended in Detroit back then were rough and dangerous; the walks home after school were especially perilous. So I hung out in the large public library close by and read until dinner time when the streets were safer to walk home. I started with magazines and discovered Scientific American. I read every recent copy and then started going to the bound years of past issues so I wouldn't miss a single month's column by Martin Gardner or the amazing monthly Amateur Scientist column. This lead to me reading every math book and every science book I could understand in that library. I eventually started spending 10 cents on weekends to ride the bus downtown to the main library to browse their stacks and read more about math and science.
My parents grew up on farms and, while educated, knew little about math or science. My schools, until we moved from Detroit, were of little value. However, I ended up getting a Math degree and then an EE degree from MIT--it wouldn't have happened without Scientific American's influence. I was an unusual, nerdy kid, but I'm so happy with my life now.
It's sad to me that Scientific American is no longer like the one I grew up reading.
The Jedi are inappropriate mascots for social justice. Although they’re ostensibly heroes within the Star Wars universe, the Jedi are inappropriate symbols for justice work. They are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of “Jedi mind tricks,” etc.)
[0]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-term-jedi...
As far as the plot of Star Wars is concerned, that's true. The corruption and zealotry of the Jedi and their contribution to the fall of the Republic and the creation of Darth Vader was one of the primary themes of the prequel trilogy, that unfortunately got lost in the awkwardness of the prequels' execution.
https://web.archive.org/web/20191025202655if_/https://michae...
One day you could be delivering a fiery speech on the evils of exploitative Capitalism, how Communism is the only way forward, and how you bow to the Proletariat. The next day you could be on a one-way trip to a Siberian labour camp. Maybe your speech wasn't vigorous enough. Maybe you made a joke that was ill-received. Maybe you didn't make a joke, but someone in the audience did. Or none of the above really, and you were just unlucky.
I don't yet see this so much with Woke; right now, the enemies are the Unwoke, and bear the brunt of the criticism. But as and when Woke grows (which I'm not actually sure is happening), the in-fighting is bound to begin. One person is for Equitable Science but maybe not Equitable PE lessons, let's cancel them. Another is for all things Equitable, but not quite in the right way, woe to them.
The thing about such ideologies is that statement-driven movements favour making more and more extreme statements, because simply repeating the message doesn't drive the movement forward. But then inevitably some people get left behind.
I think the enemies are the "not the right kind of woke". Just look at the treatment of JK Rowling, someone who has been on the left for decades and who was considered pretty progressive in the past. If she didn't make so much money for her publisher she would have been cancelled.
The comparison with communism is absolutely true.
https://www.newsweek.com/math-suffers-white-supremacy-accord...
"The screenshot making the rounds on Twitter is an image of the EquitableMath.org website that begins with: "White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when... The focus is on getting the 'right' answer."
If a math class preferentially teaches one approach, and does not accept other solutions because they are not the "right" one taught in class, then it's 1) a disservice to the students, and 2) likely discriminates against children from immigrant families, where the parents (who help the kids with their education) might have themselves learned an alternative approach in their schools, and passed it on to their kids.
Lots of math can be taught in multiple ways. Do you teach long division, or counting-intersections? Which of several ways do you use to solve the quadratic equation? If your student uses a way you didn't teach, is that wrong?
In the context of the source document that Newsweek was commenting about, it does not "confuse the objective of a mathematical proof", and you can double-check my assertion because you can read what EquitableMath itself says on the topic, at https://equitablemath.org/ , rather than diluted through culture war partisan readings. Here's the relevant quote:
> 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
Also, concerning my earlier point:
> 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."
When you write "their own way", you should also know that math curriculum in the US, taught as algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, is a post-war construct because "the end-users of mathematics studies were at that time mostly in the physical sciences and engineering" (quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math ), while statistics and discrete mathematics are de-prioritized.
Quoting again from EquitableMath:
> 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.
You can read https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... yourself and see the full current context.
I say "current" because it was updated in May 2021. The Newsweek article cites the original publication, which is at https://web.archive.org/web/20210212170440/https://equitable... .
The current document says: "There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning."
This is immediately followed by the explanation:
> 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.
There's also (on a search for the word 'focus'):
> 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. ...
NOTE! In the 2020 document, the quote is indeed "The focus is on getting the “right” answer. / The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Up-holding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict."
The original document asks teachers that instead of emphasizing questions with only one "right" answer to instead:
> - Choose problems that have complex, competing, or multiple answers
> Verbal Example: Come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem
> Classroom Activity: Challenge standardized test questions by getting the “right” answer, but justify other answers by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.
> Classroom Activity: Deconstructed Multiple Choice - given a set of multiple choice answers, students discuss why these answers may have been included (can also be used to highlight common mistakes).
> Professional Development: Study the purpose of math education, and re-envision it. Schooling as we know it began during the industrial revolution, when precision and accuracy were highly valued. What are the myriad ways we can conceptualize mathematics in today’s world and beyond?
> - Engage with true problem solving
> Verbal Example: What are some strategies we can use to engage with this problem?
> Classroom Activity: Using a set of data, analyze it in multiple ways to draw different conclusions.
> Professional Development: Study the art of problem solving by engaging in rich, complex mathematical problems. Consider whether your own content knowledge is sufficient to allow you to problem solve through math without the strategies you typically use.
Do you interpret this 2020 document as arguing "Trying to get the right answer is white supremacy"? I don't. It's all about how "right" is a tricky concept, and influenced by the dominant culture.
Nor does it come across like encouraging a "lifetime of innumeracy and being the patsies of those who do know math." And I don't see how someone could draw that conclusion after reading the source material.
I can understand how someone can draw that conclusion after reading cherry-picked quotes. But that's why I think it's important to reference the original material.
The points in the updated document are along the same lines as the original document, so it's not like the authors did a 180, but rather clarified their intent.
Do we have common ground in saying that the objective of this dialogue is to improve math education so that pupils of any background have the skills to participate in a problem-solving job interview?
It does use the term "objectivity." As you likely know, page 5 stresses:
> 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.
It then lists "Objectivity" as one of the "terms used to identify white supremacy characteristics as defined by Jones and Okun."
I know nothing about their research, much less their definition, and am not able to comment meaningfully on if it can even be applied to the concept "objective truth".
What I do know is that most of the pop culture derision of this paper, including some comments here on HN, are not based on actually reading the paper but on cherry-picked quotes.
> We know that’s not true on a global scale
I do not know what your statement means, much less understand how you know that.
It's clearly concerning the US. I don't think it's meaningful to extrapolate it to the rest of the world. (Is white supremacy as characterized by Jones and Okun an issue in every country? I find that hard to believe.)
> Do we have common ground in saying that the objective of this dialogue is to improve math education so that pupils of any background have the skills to participate in a problem-solving job interview?
Not at all. I don't believe schools should be viewed as producing products to be consumed by employers.
They also produce citizens, who likely need some math fluency in order to understand certain issues (to say nothing of biology and other fields).
And they produce self-employed people who never have a job interview. (I don't think Bill Gates ever had a job interview.)
And "problem-solving jobs" is such a wide-ranging topic that it would include preschool educator, commercial fisher, and bike mechanic - fields which I don't think require much math education.
I expect multiple proofs of Pythagoras to be the early lesson that multiple proofs exist for the same theorem. I think you’re mistaken, but I’m not a math teacher. Renaming the Pythagorean theorem to ABC is fine with me.
It’s not the memorization or process of deploying the quadratic formula, but the problem-solving steps shown in your work. Deriving it from first principles will get partial credit, even if (in theory) calculations fail because the pupil is only familiar with a non-Arab-Indian number system.
You assert that math teaches false constructs, but this is not because teachers “internalize the sequences”. Word problems are simplifications. Physics teachers simplify mechanics to demonstrate Newtonian laws, yet this doesn’t demonstrate quantum effects. Is that “highly detrimental”?
Also, you’re wrong about matriculating from matrix methods to third-semester (multivariate) calculus. But, it is my opinion that matrix methods serve potential programmers better than calculus. I’m sure you agree that, whether it’s a gatekeeper or not, multiple great, free resources exist nowadays for kids of any background to learn matrices, independent of whether they matriculate to calculus.
The claimed end game is that it removes oppression from those who have been oppressed, and they are free to flourish.
The actual end game? I suspect that it's going to be very complicated. This may keep some people from dropping out, which is a positive. But it's going to leave a bunch of people with an "education" that is close to worthless, of little value in the real world. In the real world, the right answer matters.
So a bunch of these people are going to grow up and find out that the world values their abilities very little. The options left are either poverty or a life of welfare support, depending on how much they can appeal to the conscience of the larger society.
If you have children, and you care about their future, you need to be paying attention to what's going on with their education. The days of being able to just hand them over to the public school system and trust them to do an adequate job are over, if they ever existed.
This will be the next crisis for sure. It is only logical. I wonder how that will play out?
Namely, that we can be divided into simple groups almost always by sight, and then are somehow guilty by association for what others who look like us have done, in the past, regardless of our actual connection to those events.
That's just a restatement of racism and original sin.
I say it's original sin because--there's nothing you can do to change things or make yourself better. You are permanently damned by what the worst person ever with your skin tone did.
I say racism because it redefines racism in such a way that racism towards men and whites is mostly OK. The goal here really isn't to move the pendulum to the center, its to move it the opposite direction where white men in particular are the lowest status.
I do believe in structural racism, but I wonder sometimes how much of the racism on the right could have been avoided if we hadn't told them they were all irredeemable racists and that we hated them. The vitriol kind of makes everyone have to pick a side.
It doesn't though. You can be a white person, even a white Conservative, be opposed to CRT and not "pick a side." If their response to being called racist is to lean even harder into the racism, that just proves that their critics had a point.
If there's only two places to go, and one sides tells you they hate you, you will go the other place. Works on both sides.
There are never "only two places to go," nor are there only two "sides." You need to be racist to begin with to view social politics in such reductionist terms, such that all paths somehow lead to a justification of hating people rather than simply disagreeing with their ideas.
https://equitablemath.org/faq/
If they violate their FAQ, then the ire is warranted as we try to fix the damage.
I don't think it breaks any rules, but it might be considered off-topic by many. It's certainly not why I come to HN.
We are not in a vacuum but bearing the effects of historic movements from which also our interests depend.
These things are important and relevant.