>John Armstrong @johnarmstrong5 ; Reader in Financial Mathematics at King's College London. Also interested in academic freedom and a more sane approach to EDI

You didn't read the article, did you? Is that what "far-right" means now? Things one's too dismissive to look into?

The extreme-right rejects democracy, while the radical right accepts it, but rejects elements of liberal democracy such as minority rights or rule of law.

Obviously the Spectator is nowhere near far right and painstakingly affirms democratic principles. They’re mainstream right if anything.

Frankly I find opinions like yours extremist in themselves - disavowing press publications because of fuzzy accusations substantiated by twitter.

And then, we can certainly debate the amount of historical context that should be included ideally in a mathematics education (although this has no clear answer; some people might prefer it, some people - who don't like humanities to begin with - might be worried to see the subjects they have been traditionally good at "diluted" - and at any rate, how much history helps with understanding mathematics depends a lot on the particular case in question). I do think the history of mathematics is interesting - although I don't think that there is that much ground to cover when it comes to the Babylonians...

But it's still a fact that today's maths teachers are not necessarily equipped to turn half of their mathematics currículum into a historical or sociological discipline.

And it also remains a fact that mathematics as we conceive of it was started by the Ancient Greeks and is tied a lot to our culture and to any culture that was also influenced by the Greeks (which includes the Muslim world and India - indeed in the middle ages, that is where all the progress was made), although some significant results were also discovered e.g. in China.

I recall a time when "far right" was used to describe Nazis. This sort of wolf crying has rendered the term meaningless just like the word Nazi itself, racism, sexism, etc. It doesn't work anymore, people see through it.

The Spectator is a conservative publication with a reasonable liberal dislike for far-left overreach and bullying, like that discussed in the article.

The Spectator used to be a respectable right wing publication. Since Brexit and Bojo, it's gone crazy. It's taken the same break from reality we've seen elsewhere in the far right, where people would rather spend time fighting a culture war that is not happening (except where they are making it...) than address any real economic or political issues...

Meanwhile:

>In New Zealand the school chemistry and biology syllabus has been decolonised and now invokes the concept of mauri, or life force, to give the atomic theory a new spiritual dimension. This is because of a central diktat that Maori knowledge must be given equal status to other forms of knowledge, including science. Activists also have statistics in their sights. One academic review of school statistics textbooks ‘with a theoretical framework of queer theory and critical mathematics’ notes disapprovingly that ‘pregnancy was used frequently in problems involving females/women.’

>John Armstrong @johnarmstrong5 ; Reader in Financial Mathematics at King's College London. Also interested in academic freedom and a more sane approach to EDI

You didn't read the article, did you? Is that what "far-right" means now? Things and subject matter experts one's too dismissive to look into?