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How Seattle Progressives Are Denying Underprivilged Kids an Education
It’s billed as new and exciting news out of Seattle Public Schools: Math is woke! Social justice is an integral part of the curriculum; even more than before! Forbes reported on the new initiative,
A math teacher warned her students on the first day of school that this year, math will be different:
“My classroom will focus on helping your child to understand how math is part of everything we do, including the arts, science, and the humanities so all children can start to see themselves as mathematicians. To make math more interesting, I will help students use compelling applications of math. Students are highly motivated by issues of fairness and justice, so I will give students the opportunity to chance to understand how math has been used to do bad things to people. I will also ensure your child understands how math has also served as a tool for liberation. Lastly, my biggest goal for this year is not just giving your child the ability to use math to analyze the way the world is, but the critical thinking to use math to design the world as it ought to be.”
This might sound like the instructional framework of a high-end private school. But if Seattle Public Schools is successful in its innovative, but surprisingly controversial initiative to reframe math through a social justice lens, this fictional introduction will be the reality in a district where a third of students receive free and reduced lunch.
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According to math scores in the 2019 nation’s report card, only 41% of 4th graders are proficient in math, and only 34% of 8th graders are. These numbers, which have not moved much since 2009 are dismal on their surface. Digging deeper, when these results are broken out by race and ethnicity, only 20% of Black and 26% of Hispanic students are proficient. These damning results show that something is clearly something wrong with math education in the United States.
Math scores aren’t lower in these communities because it isn’t “woke” or sufficiently culturally understandable by students; it’s because these kids come from backgrounds that already struggle academically, and then they are thrust into bad school districts with young and ineffectual teachers and administrators who will test out this kind of ridiculous curriculum on them. The Forbes writer, Colin Seale, is baffled that this might be a controversial plan, comparing it to something that a high-end private school might enact.
But here’s the rub: a high-performing private school wouldn’t ever enact entirely new curriculum based on an experiment, especially not with a subject as unsubjective as math. There is plenty of research that indicates that reading comprehension can hinge on if a student has familiarity with a subject, but there is zero convincing evidence that the reason minority kids are underperforming is because of anything related to “social justice.” The students who get experimented on aren’t the rich private school kids, they’re the ones in a school district with 1/3 of the kids getting free lunches. For educators so focused on “social justice,” it’s a deeply unjust experiment.
Published in General
Ah, Revolutionary Math to prepare the children to get the same Revolutionary Economics degree as AOC. Of course they will also have to be taught how to read (or just parrot) Revolutionary Slogans in order to declare proper Revolutionary Thoughts like the intersections between oppression, Social Justice, Climate Change, and Some Lives Matter (more than others).
In a sane world, entrusting your child to these Revolutionaries would be considered child abuse. In this insane world, not entrusting them to the Revolution will result in them being convicted of wrongthink and having their social credit score collapse.
Arrgghh…This is happening in districts outside of Seattle and Washington state, too. I taught fourth grade, for 24 years, in two different states. Over the last six years, curriculum has become more and more infested with the idea that students should be taught ideas, instead of facts. The students don’t know any facts! They are nine years old in 4th grade. They’re just starting to notice that everyone’s family isn’t exactly like their own family. Many of them don’t even know the difference between their city and their state, or a country and a state. They need to learn how to spell, and to memorize the multiplication facts because all the math they’ll ever do after this requires knowing those facts. They need to learn to read! Many of them get to the upper grades and can read only at 2nd grade level. This has a lot to do with them having not been exposed to reading till they showed up at Kindergarten. “Social Justice Math” is a ridiculous concept. A waste of student and teacher time…Basics, people–BASICS! Parents need to read to their children. Teachers need to help students learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide.
I had to retire finally because it was driving me crazy…and I’m old. But the idiots who design the curriculum have NO experience with actual children, I’m convinced. Sigh…I’ll stop now.
My kids have gone to the poorest school in a good public school district. I chose where to live based on the school district. Some lines were redrawn and my kids ended up in the “worst” school in this good district. Up to 1/2 of the kids in their grade school got free/reduced lunch.
The district would never allow this junk. Even with the lower economic status of the children, the kids scores are always above the National and State results. Schools with poorer students can do very good. They just need good structure and to be held accountable. Not “woke” math but being pushed to learn normal math.
A high % of K-12 ‘educators’…especially the administrators…aren’t themselves very interested in *knowledge*, and don’t really grasp the fact that other people might be. That’s why the feel the need to blend each and every field of learning with *other stuff* until everything from literature to physics to engineering is turned into Social Studies.
See Stephen Karlson’s post The Inclusive Symbolism Crowds Out the Intellectual Substance.
Once the SJW agenda is incorporated into the engineering curiculum, I’d recommend not driving over any bridge designed by an engineer with SJW training . . .
The kids would br better off working additional “word problems” than listening to this guff.
We can’t come up with some special approach impose on our public schools to fix them. We have to separate schools from each other, let parents and teachers run the schools and let kids go wherever their parents want them to go that they can get in. Like the rest of the economy, let demand determine what we produce where for whom. The only place I know that did this ( at least in the modern world) was New Zealand where they went from the bottom of the western world to just below Singapore and Finland in a couple of years. That got my attention. They just did away with the educational superstructure and let schools be entrepreneurial and independent. Why should socialism work in the most important sector in any economy? All of our Ideas about how to fix a national educational system are nonsense and everybody who is not a socialist should understand that, but we don’t. We constantly exchange ideas on what to impose. Freedom really works.
One of the hallmarks of US education is the idea that students will only learn if you get them excited about something.
That something, as far as the left-marinated NEA is concerned is injustice – social, ecological, colonial, etc. – because you, the student have been wronged by [boomers, white people, US culture, greedy corporations, selfish rich people, legacies of slavery, food deserts, and so much else. Doesn’t that make you angry? Don’t you want to do something about it? Let’s start now; open your books to page 291 and do the first five math problems there.
Yup, this is a problem. And it’s not just a leftwing problem.
Asia is going to crush us in a generation.
Already about 55% of our STEM grad school slots are filled with foreign students.
http://ricochet.com/690114/you-have-got-to-be-kidding-nope-its-seattle/