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The White Supremacy of Arithmetic
From a recent FoxNews story: “The Oregon Department of Education recently encouraged teachers to register for training that encourages ‘ethnomathematics’ and argues, among other things, that White supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer.”
Now, as a conservative, I don’t pretend to understand this. But to my untrained ear, it certainly sounds like leftist teachers think that being white is equivalent to being correct. Although perhaps I misunderstand, because again, to a conservative this makes no sense.
Part of the “Equitable Math” toolkit explains that, “the belief that there is such a thing as being objective or ‘neutral’” is a characteristic of White supremacy. It expands on this point, “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.” And it instructs teachers to “identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”
Remember, this is middle school math. How are you supposed to teach math to 13-year-olds without perpetuating objectivity? How does long division uphold racist views? How is finding the right answer related to white supremacy? I’m fairly certain that this is not satire. I think they’re serious. And these people teach our children.
This isn’t even sociology, which is essentially the study of the absurd. No. This is middle school math.
When my dad went to college in the ’60s, he said a lot of his professors and coaches were WWII veterans who went to graduate school on the GI bill after the war. They were not flower children, as you might imagine.
When I was in grade school in the ’70s, some of my teachers were men who stayed in college and got their teaching certificate, then agreed to teach in underserved areas like mine to avoid the Vietnam draft. They were a bit different than the hard-boiled typed my Dad described. This, I think, is when it really started.
Since then, our educational system has moved gradually but steadily left. Each little step seemed relatively unimportant, and anyone who argued was understandably criticized for making a big deal out of nothing.
And eventually, 50 years later, here we are. Training middle school math teachers on the white supremacy of arithmetic.
How do we get back to reality? So many little things have changed. So many little things. I’m not sure how to fix all this.
But I’m sure of this: Our public schools cannot be fixed. They’re too far gone. We need to start over.
The teachers’ unions, the Democratic Party, the media, and many other powerful organizations will make this a difficult and messy process. But it must be done. And the longer we wait, the more difficult and messy it will be.
Meanwhile, our 13-year-olds are learning about the white supremacy of arithmetic.
We need to get started.
Published in General
Yeah, but @phcheese, admit it: It was worth it because you were measuring and charging for cheese. How can anyone not love cheese? Whatever you have to do?
Does anyone else remember “new math”? I was bad enough at math, and then the “new math” destroyed whatever was left. It was just awful.
I’ve recently been following the KGB Files channel on YouTube. It’s done by a Ukrainian guy who speaks good English, but somewhat awkwardly, and is about Ukrainian KGB documents that have been known for a while but haven’t been published in English.
One of them was an evaluation of 50 rock bands that were more or less banned in the Soviet Union. A brief summary of the reasons for the ban on each group, such as sex, neo-fascism, vandalism, sadism, violence, permissiveness, anti-communism, nationalism, and apolitical.
That last one puzzled me, but it shouldn’t have. The vlogger assured me that it was bad to be apolitical in the Soviet Union.
So yes, leftists have a long history of forcing you to participate in their lies.
Here’s the video in case anyone is interested, not that I want to encourage anyone to support Big Tech:
Not the worst video to bolster a position I’ve ever seen. But I’m not going to say I wasn’t thinking about going to atropine injectors just to stay awake.
“Julio Iglesias banned for moral licentiousnes and … neo-fascism.”
Well, obviously.”
It’s strange. I have no patience whatsoever for the latest video showing the election was stolen if it doesn’t get to the point in the first 20 seconds. But I seem to have endless patience for listening to the likes of this guy. Call me weird.
Great read, on that very topic.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/natan-sharansky-doublethink
Timely.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that around the period you’re talking about there was something like a “National Defense Education Act” that had a provision that made loans for students going into education and that, after 10 years of teaching, the loan would be forgiven.
A high school classmate of mine (class of 1965) went that route and, I believe, drank his way through school and taught for 30 years, retiring with a very generous retirement package. He then had a second career as a school bus driver. (Don’t know that I’d want him driving a bus with my kid on it.)
With all the draft dodgers that went into teaching, I always wondered why they had “Defense” in the legislation’s title. Sort of a cruel joke…
Tom Lehrer on “New Math”
https://youtu.be/W6OaYPVueW4
Yes, this dad felt like an idiot.