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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about the constitutional or jurisdictional issues here. But I am curious why "critical race theory" would be in a math textbook. I've taught math myself, and I would only ever choose a textbook that was about math. Having random political stuff in a math text is a bit of a red flag. What purpose is it serving and who thinks it should be there. I don't know if a state can or should set limits on what's in textbooks, but conceptually, I don't see why anyone would want CRT in a math book.

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Why do you believe Florida here? What’s more likely, that a math book is trying to “brainwash kids through CRT” or known political exaggerators are exaggerating?

I’d rather not need to “believe” anyone with a political agenda. Can we see the book and read what it says?

Ask the governor of Florida. He's the one who put out the press release but refuses to offer any evidence for why books were banned.

This right here. It's FUD and it works in Florida.

I know both Florida teachers and elementary math curriculum writers. All call BS.

The latter is happy to not be the former. Republican "moms" control the schools now.

As a former student and now a parent. I have no idea why we need to recreate math books over and over and over again. Seems an incredible waste of resources. The fundamental material doesn't change.

I have seen politically motivated questions pop up in math questions for my kids. For years, this is pretty standard practice in my experience. Its not an appropriate venue to promote ideas yet it is used.

I am unsurprised at the Florida announcement. But it speaks to much deeper issues in education and I'm uncertain at Florida's moves.

> I have seen politically motivated questions pop up in math questions for my kids.

Can you provide examples?

Not the OP but I remember people had a bit of a reaction to maths and other textbooks when I was at school 30+ years ago in a rural part of the UK.

The people in the examples were usually non-traditional British names like Deepak, Surinder, Jamal etc. yet such names would be very rare in a place with little immigration at that time. There would only be a handful of non British-white kids in a school of thousands.

The reaction was far from outrage just a "well I guess we are doing this now". As a kid it seemed a little silly and forced but it was my first exposure to those names in print and helped normalise such identities. I'd say it was a positive thing if a bit over done / not subtle. I'd hate to think what would have happened if the parents had mumsnet or twitter back then...

Yeah, exactly--I spent some time thinking before asking the question, and that was about all I could come up with, too. And that felt so obviously silly that that can't be it, right?

> As a former student and now a parent. I have no idea why we need to recreate math books over and over and over again. Seems an incredible waste of resources. The fundamental material doesn't change.

The way we teach the material changes, for valid reasons:

1. We can get better at teaching it. (Optimistically).

2. We might need to update textbooks for more up-to-date references. Even if it's not political ideas, textbooks might reference things that are not relevant (or not reference things that are).

3. Whether or not they are better, sometimes new ideas of how to teach material are created. E.g. new math etc.

Math books are recreated because of money.

My experience is that states generally have FOI requests that can be made where all the records of such activities are subject to inspection.

Have you even tried to get the records? Or are you just complaining that they weren't provided in the announcement for your convenience?

Yes, because filing a FOIA request on a holiday weekend and getting a response is required before merely asking officials for more details about their decision.

Unbelievable.

This is a pretty poor characterization of the context of the comment.

Accusations are flying around here including calling them liars and intentionally hiding information. This is a far cry from "merely asking". Particularly since the other party isn't present in the forum, providing the avenue available to us to actually do the asking seemed reasonable to me.

Unless the point is to complain uselessly into the void because of the need for two minutes of hate against political enemies. Then I'll bow out...

> This is a pretty poor characterization of the context of the comment.

I think it’s a completely fair characterization of the comment. You said:

>> Have you even tried to get the records? Or are you just complaining that they weren't provided in the announcement for your convenience?

The only fair way to read that comment is that if you haven’t gone through a FOIA process (on a holiday weekend), you can’t comment or complain about the lack of transparency in a decision.

It’s actually very common that press releases like this are offered up with appendixes that show the decision making process and examples. That didn’t happen here. It’s worth asking why and it’s worth criticizing the ruling party for not offering that information. That’s not a political statement.

> Accusations are flying around here including calling them liars and intentionally hiding information.

I didn’t make any of those accusations. I said

>> Ask the governor of Florida. He's the one who put out the press release but refuses to offer any evidence for why books were banned.

Because thus far, he is the one who has put out the informantion and has refused to provide evidence when asked (and he has been asked, as has the Department of Education). Not responding is a refusal (or worse, implying that details might not be public until the publishers have appealed). It allows people on both sides to invent reasons as to why books were banned, which doesn’t help anything. If you can’t share the details about specific books not being accepted (and I think that is a cop-out excuse), you shouldn’t issue a press release saying it is for X reason with absolutely zero evidence or context. That shouldn’t be a controversial statement or opinion.

> Unless the point is to complain uselessly into the void because of the need for two minutes of hate against political enemies. Then I'll bow out...

You seem to see this as an issue about political sides; it isn’t. I would have the exact same response if a Democratic governor issued an order without proof/evidence of why a decision was made, especially if it were blatantly about pandering to the base.

Exactly. If this group of folks is saying “we won’t even show you the things we are seeming is evil” why would they have any credibility in your mind?

> Worth noting: The education department described the review process as "transparent," but did not name the rejected textbooks nor provide examples of passages that failed to meet the criteria.

In 2022, both are very possible.

that the math book is trying to brainwash kids through CRT

What incentive does Florida have to lie here? What other reason could they have to want to ban certain math textbooks?

Trying to look like warriors to their constituents in a manufactured culture war, frankly.

Most communication is performative these days, and it's breaking society.

> What incentive does Florida have to lie here?

What incentive do they have to not provide details about what textbooks rejected? It would be embarrassing if they were actually transparent.

"28 (21%) of these books were "not included on the adopted list because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT," the statement said."

So, the books contained something they didn't like. One of the things they don't like is CRT.

It's not clear that any of the math books even do contain CRT based on what was said.

The short answer: it isn't, and they're throwing chum to their base. Or lying, because they didn't name any of the material that they've banned. Maybe even some of both.

The slightly longer answer: if you read the claim, it's just a re-warmed litany of current and past right-wing shibboleths. "Inclusions of Common Core." That one's a decade old. "The unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning in mathematics." That one's from the sixties. These are the drumbeat words pounded into the heads of the people listening to talk radio every day. The officials involved know that these phrases cause knee-jerk reactions from their base and the folks doing the banning would like those to associate positive feelings with them the next time they've got an election to win (Corcoran is a pretty well-known Republican flack).

(The comedy answer: some of the word problems probably used identifiably nontraditionally white names. And the tragic answer: the comedy answer might be right.)

Probably stands for

Circumference Radius Tangent

In that context, but 'CRT is banned'

> But I am curious why "critical race theory" would be in a math textbook.

Unless they actually tell us what they found, we really won't know. It could just be more FUD to stir up the base, actually, that is probably what it is.

Here is an argument for it:

https://activisthistory.com/2021/12/15/critical-race-theory-...

"Critical theory can be a vehicle through which we embrace the political nature of mathematics education while engaging students, especially those most vulnerable in the discipline, in mathematics. Critical theory has at its center the examination of power and privilege inherent in large systems such as the system of education."

I don't have an opinion, just found the article.

That doesn’t seem like math. It mentions math but I’m kinda skeptical about how that works as far as teaching math itself.

That's an odd argument to post for having no opinion....

Wtf does that mean for a math textbook? Cringey word problems of the form "if 7 people are racist, and the number of racist people double every 2 years, how many after 6 years?" Like its kind of hard to figure out what that means concretely.

And? You think this statement talking about the process of math education is being taught in k-12? (Even if it were, what is wrong with its premise?)

What’s wrong with inserting an irrational political premise which subverts the clean, rational/objective world of maths, into the books we use to teach our kids? It’s literally wedging a political framing into the foundation of mathematics.

For every one of you who apparently sees no problem, there is at a minimum one other who thinks you’re absolutely bonkers. Many of whom frankly are probably willing to physically fight to prevent it.

Compare to consensus on what 1+1 equals.

Probably something about "Equitable math".

Teaching that math problems have a correct solution ("1+1=2") is considered racist by some, because… I can't tell you, because I didn't understand that when it was discussed some time ago.

Maybe someone else remembers the structure of the argument and can provide an explanation?

Maybe because you’re throwing some junk out here on HN, you can offer up a citation? Who says 1+1=2 is racist, exactly?

"hyperbole"

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/is-it-racist-to-expect-...

https://twitter.com/Michael_Frisch_/status/13635430659868180...

Lots of words there with no evidence.

The actual training teachers are receiving is that there are many ways to teach things like long division, and insisting on only using one method is not useful to students.

As an example, when teaching multiples of 9 you shouldn’t just use rote learning but point out the internal checksum of multiples of nine (add up all the digits to get a single digit and you get 9, for the simple tables the first digit will be 1 less than the number being multiplied, so 4 x 9 is 36, 3 + 6 is 9, 5 x 9 is forty-something so working backwards 9 - 4 is 5, so 4 x 9 is 45).

In addition there’s the “times ten minus one” method: 3 x 9 is the same as 3 x (10 - 1) so 30 - 3 is 27 (and add up the digits to make 9).

Teachers need to be allowed to use multiple methods of instruction, and restricting them to only exactly what is in the syllabus is racist because then the only people who get the quality instruction are the rich who can afford out of school tutelage, ie: predominantly white populations due to institutionalised racism in the USA keeping non-white populations poorer than their mostly white neighbours. Yes, there are white people living in poverty but when you compare white to non-white populations in the same region they are still better off.

The shorthand in the USA is that any policy which keeps poor people from success is racist because the rich/poor divide in the USA is predominantly along racial lines.

I agree with the multiple methods, but I believe that certain things in math are considered to be basic building blocks (such as single digits add/sub/mul/div) that should be memorized similar to in sports how certain movements are considered basic and are practiced until it becomes muscle memory.

As for the difference in outcome of white vs non-white in poor neighborhoods, I feel there are more at play than institutionalized racism, but it is incredibly difficult to have a nuance discussion on the topic.

Not exactly the most compelling. It mentions a bunch of reasonable trends that have nothing to do with race (like teaching kids why a formula works over expecting them to blindly memorize everything) and then claiming that the reason this is being done is about race instead of the obvious reasons.

> Teaching that math problems have a correct solution ("1+1=2") is considered racist by some, because… I can't tell you, because I didn't understand that when it was discussed some time ago.

This keeps coming up; I can't be bothered to find all the resources yet again on this, but a lot of reporting on this was bullshit. I should probably write an article about it so I can just link it.

What the text actually said was that a focus on "getting the right answer" was bad math education, and that you should focus more on the process, methods, and actual teaching understanding, rather than just "the right answer". You can teach a monkey to "get the right answer" by just applying a few tricks, but that doesn't mean the monkey understands math. Anyone with an interest in math will recognize this is just good math education.

Now, I do have gripes with that paper because it was also filled with really odd usages of "white supremacy" and the like that were completely misplaced; it seems like a really odd lens to view things through. I guess that's the "CRT" aspect and I don't understand at all where the authors are coming from with that. But if you ignore that then the actual advice with regards to math education was pretty solid.

It most certainly wasn't "have a correct solution ("1+1=2") is considered racist". Find the text. Read it. It's really not as bad as certain outrage sites would have you believe (again, there are aspects to criticise IMHO, but not this).

“ But if you ignore that then the actual advice with regards to math education was pretty solid”

But not new, either. As you say, it (https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...) is CRT sauce poured over non-controversial advice on teaching.

That, IMO, makes it dangerous, as it associates CRT with things everybody will agree to be good, indirectly instilling (or at least trying to do so) the notion that CRT is good.

This all means very little. Any pedagogy is going to make flowery claims about understanding material on a deeper level, and the Common Core already espouses these values. This sort of language is as obnoxious and insulting as saying, "What makes my pedagogy different? I emphasize actual learning."

What's important is in the concrete specs which textbook makers, curriculum designers, and other industry stakeholders will target and respond to. And under the Equitable Math program, there is simply no spec for, say, Algebra in middle school. That's what industry stakeholders and textbook writers will see.

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