Modern Educayshun

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An effort to portray traditional styles of teaching math as being non-inclusive is gaining steam, in part courtesy of the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft—as is mockery of the effort.

The latest example of the latter is a screenshot of the Equitable Math curriculum that is supported with a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to The Education Trust Inc.

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."

That's followed by a paragraph that reads: "The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict."

The Equitable Math method of teaching consists of five "Strides." The first Stride, "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics," is the one getting the most attention from detractors.

The lesson calls for "educators to reflect on their own biases" and bills itself as "a collective approach to dismantling white supremacy." The Stride calls for teachers to avoid ideas that reinforce "paternalism" and "powerhoarding" and to continually challenge themselves to "incorporate antiracist practices" in their classrooms.

Too often, says the lesson plan, "students have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and if they fail it is their fault." This approach is wrong because it "does not give room for the systemic reasons students fail."

Another Stride asks teachers to engage "instructional coaches" who have "the potential to scale their impact to a number of classrooms and students in order to dismantle the culture of white supremacy that exists within the math classroom."

The Equitable Math curriculum also borrows from the bestselling book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, where the author writes, "Whiteness is dynamic, relational, and operating at all times and by myriad levels. These processes and practices include basic rights, values, beliefs, perspectives and experiences purported to be commonly shared by all, but which are actually only consistently afforded to white people."

It's unknown how many schools have adopted the Equitable Math curriculum, but its website lists "partners" that include the Association of California School Administrators, Monterey County Office of Education, the Sacramento County Office of Education, Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley and several more that are mostly headquartered in California. Fox News, though, reported that the Oregon Department of Education has encouraged its teachers to register for the Equitable Math training, while a radio station in Seattle reported that a version of it is already functioning at schools there.

But how can math be racist?

In the US, math is taught from a Western perspective.

Likely, every famous math person in a math book is a Western white man.

So, the idea is to make math cultural using numbers, geometries, abstractions that connect to people based on culture.

Satire may be "funny", but satire isn't reality. And satire based on a fictitious strawman situation doesn't magically become real or true just cos someone satirized it.

The funniest part was how completely disconnected from reality it was. Right about the time it praised all of the work equally and gave everyone an averaged grade split equally, I was in tears laughing. Most absurd nonsense I've ever seen. Go try that in real college, see what happens.

As for math being racist, it's not that Math as a construct and tool is racist, it's that the teaching methods and expectations can be racist. But that's an even broader topic that people don't want to talk about.

Satire exaggerate things and is a criticism as well. I view the part of the asian overweight guy as a crticism when someone doesn't earn something, because someone else qualifies better, that happens to not be a minority and they go out exclaiming "discrimination!" and that is very real.

I'm not sure why math is chosen here, but usually there is the idea of a gender gap in math and science and obviously you can tell what that leads to, specially from the SWJ's side. and while we're at it, there is something called it "the gender-equality paradox", which is interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... em/553592/

It all comes down to freedom to choose whatever your passion is in a free and equal society, from there, you get "paradoxically" the gap.

"I dont get off on less than two"

Nonsense.

Math is "culturally" the same regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or like that.

A right triangle is one where one of its angles is 90 degrees.

Whether or not the triangle is African or European is irrelevant.

The video is a satire. The teacher is cuckoo. She speaks in total non-sequitors.