Great commentary. One must remember that the poorest of Indian kids from the sub continent USE math as a way out of the slums. They recognize education as a way up and out. They come from very rough beginnings yet manage to find that math and science, and mastery of it, is a ticket out of poverty. Why does Gates, a man who made his zillions on math, now see math education as a racist endeavor? Preposterous.
Clearly, I’m missing a few things. How is it that math existed long before today’s white supremacy yet is somehow an example of white supremacy? What am I missing?
I don’t know if I’m right, but I’m going to suggest a hypothesis, which is that the woke “educators” promulgating this hare-brained parody of math pedagogy know exactly what they’re doing. We’re incredulously pointing out how ridiculous it is, on the assumption that said educators are too stupid or ideological to realize that they’re consigning their students to lifelong innumeracy and unemployability. But I don’t think so. I think the point of this looking-glass approach to education is to deliberately create a generation of incompetent, self-entitled leeches who will milk victimhood for all it’s worth while demanding that other people do life’s heavy lifting for them. They will be the new nobility class. If they never learn to figure out the right answer to a problem that has only one right answer, what else will they be good for besides giving orders?
I'm not sure it's that consciously cynical, these people genuinely believe this stuff. These ideas are being formulated and promulgated by true believers, who also happen to be people who simply don't have to worry about such things as machines not working and crops not growing if their concepts are faulty. Much as under Stalin and Mao, the true price will not be borne by the people spreading this rot!
"“white supremacy culture shows up in the classroom when the focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer” or when students are required to show their work, while stipulating that the very “concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false”. "
Hmmmm. This might not be ALL bad . . . if you don't have to show your work or come up with the "right" answer, think how easy it will be to figure your income tax!
If there's no correct answer, there can be no incorrect answer . . .
Ideologies that share much in common with the current woke methods once advocated "German Physics" in the late 1930s, pressured Soviet scientists to develop nuclear weapons without recourse to "Jewish theories of relativity" and relegated an entire generation of Chinese students to ignorance in the name of "forsaking bourgeois knowledge".
We were foolish to believe American democracy would be enough to protect us from these.
Anyone who believes in this nonsense should watch the film "Stand and Deliver" , a 1988 film based on a true story about a math teacher who fought this type of awful soft bigotry. He was a hero and showed what kids are capable of when you believe in them and demand excellence
Exactly! I wanted to maker this point but couldn't recall the name of the film. And note that it was hard math, AP Calculus. The film won many awards and nominations.
I have watched this film 3-4 times. AP calculus is very hard. That type of calculus is what weeded out first year engineering students in the first year of college.
The United States will get our clocks cleaned by China and India if we let this type of nonsense stand. Then the people who this nonsense is intended to help will really suffer, even worse then what this author describes. We compete globally.
I also keep reading about Magnet Schools and Gifted and Talented Programs being discontinued because of their racial make-ups (too many whites and Asians). This is preposterous. If everyone can't enroll, then no one can? Let's just scrap it? Why not instead dedicate resources to early childhood programs and mentorship in at-risk neighborhoods, the goal being equal opportunity, NOT equal outcome.
This version of totalitarianism is only "soft" for now. In short order, it will become very brutal, hard, and unforgiving. While not a literary masterpiece, the book "Son of the Revolution" predicts our future by illustrating the past in the terror and ugliness of the Cultural Revolution in China. Perhaps it is no coincidence it is now happening in the US. We, in the US, are likely in for some very difficult and turbulent generations. I am deeply saddened to see what has become of the greatest country the world has ever known: a country that has done more good for more people in more places for a longer period of time than any country in history.
Not just the US, but the entire Anglosphere ("Five Eyes" if you like), and it seems some of Western Europe, too (Macron has just announced the closing of the ENA, École Nationale d’Administration). However, Central and Eastern Europe is less likely to suffer from Wokeism, partly because the languages are highly gendered and probably impervious to serious change in the way Wokeism does it (in Polish, even the verbs are gendered by their subject).
This insightful and scary story is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda about “Jewish physics” — as if particles know the religion with which the scientific theoretician affiliates and only respond according to that theory as long as the scientist is of acceptable social standing. Here is one revealing vignette in this regard:
“Because [Nobel Laureate Philipp Lenard] was not mathematically adept, he could not get to grips with relativity or quantum theory. As a result, he decided they were nonsense. The fact that this nonsense—whose premier architect was Einstein—was being accepted and acclaimed by physicists all over the world must therefore be the result of a conspiracy. And conspiracies and cabals were the specialty of Jews.”
Thank you for a breath of fresh air. This American Cultural Revolution is just sad - and what's the favorite expression of ideological academics everywhere - derivative. Math pun intended. I would have thought our totalitarians would be a little more original with their suffocating attempts to control us all.
I’m just a mom, but isn’t the whole point of showing your work to ensure that one understands the process of problem solving and individual statements of fact? Otherwise kids (like my son) would just copy the answer from the answer key and learn nothing. How is that “anti-racist”? So let’s encourage most kids not to actually learn? Bravo. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, propagated by a body of dunces who don’t under stand the real life necessity of mathematics in so many facets of modern life. As a mom, my children will be required to show their work FOREVER.
Showing your work also means you can explain it to someone else, and spread the knowledge around. It's also very, very helpful for kids like I was: a math prodigy for whom the correct answers would pop into my head with no clear explanation for how they got there and I honestly had a hard time explaining how I knew what the answer was. Without being made to explain WHY something was correct, I would have collapsed the second I ran into the one branch of mathematics I seem allergic to: statistics and probabilities. Even a gifted kid benefits from being compelled to show their work.
You aren’t “just” a mom. Clearly you are a person with critical thinking skills who is a great role model for your children and other people young and older. Clearly you are a person who cares about the future and sees the stupidity in this “woke” education agenda. And I think your line “My children will be required to show their work forever” is brilliant and could be a slogan and a rallying cry.
I think we need to grapple with the *fact* that there are some people that you can instruct on certain topics dozens of times and in dozens of different ways and they still cannot grasp them. And that inability to grasp concepts can be for a myriad of reasons. Some emotional, some intellectual, some medical, some personality disordered, etc., and often combinations of all of these factors. Yet the “woke” demand seems to be that we grind *everyone* down to this level of ineffectuality. Lowest common denominator as cure all for all of society’s ills.
Woke's idea of an education is equal illiteracy for all. They call it "equity". Illiterates are always easy to control.
Great commentary. One must remember that the poorest of Indian kids from the sub continent USE math as a way out of the slums. They recognize education as a way up and out. They come from very rough beginnings yet manage to find that math and science, and mastery of it, is a ticket out of poverty. Why does Gates, a man who made his zillions on math, now see math education as a racist endeavor? Preposterous.
Clearly, I’m missing a few things. How is it that math existed long before today’s white supremacy yet is somehow an example of white supremacy? What am I missing?
He’s a brave man. Just throwing that out there.
I don’t know if I’m right, but I’m going to suggest a hypothesis, which is that the woke “educators” promulgating this hare-brained parody of math pedagogy know exactly what they’re doing. We’re incredulously pointing out how ridiculous it is, on the assumption that said educators are too stupid or ideological to realize that they’re consigning their students to lifelong innumeracy and unemployability. But I don’t think so. I think the point of this looking-glass approach to education is to deliberately create a generation of incompetent, self-entitled leeches who will milk victimhood for all it’s worth while demanding that other people do life’s heavy lifting for them. They will be the new nobility class. If they never learn to figure out the right answer to a problem that has only one right answer, what else will they be good for besides giving orders?
I'm not sure it's that consciously cynical, these people genuinely believe this stuff. These ideas are being formulated and promulgated by true believers, who also happen to be people who simply don't have to worry about such things as machines not working and crops not growing if their concepts are faulty. Much as under Stalin and Mao, the true price will not be borne by the people spreading this rot!
"“white supremacy culture shows up in the classroom when the focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer” or when students are required to show their work, while stipulating that the very “concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false”. "
Hmmmm. This might not be ALL bad . . . if you don't have to show your work or come up with the "right" answer, think how easy it will be to figure your income tax!
If there's no correct answer, there can be no incorrect answer . . .
Just sayin'. It's not ALL bad . . .
Ideologies that share much in common with the current woke methods once advocated "German Physics" in the late 1930s, pressured Soviet scientists to develop nuclear weapons without recourse to "Jewish theories of relativity" and relegated an entire generation of Chinese students to ignorance in the name of "forsaking bourgeois knowledge".
We were foolish to believe American democracy would be enough to protect us from these.
Anyone who believes in this nonsense should watch the film "Stand and Deliver" , a 1988 film based on a true story about a math teacher who fought this type of awful soft bigotry. He was a hero and showed what kids are capable of when you believe in them and demand excellence
Exactly! I wanted to maker this point but couldn't recall the name of the film. And note that it was hard math, AP Calculus. The film won many awards and nominations.
I have watched this film 3-4 times. AP calculus is very hard. That type of calculus is what weeded out first year engineering students in the first year of college.
The United States will get our clocks cleaned by China and India if we let this type of nonsense stand. Then the people who this nonsense is intended to help will really suffer, even worse then what this author describes. We compete globally.
I also keep reading about Magnet Schools and Gifted and Talented Programs being discontinued because of their racial make-ups (too many whites and Asians). This is preposterous. If everyone can't enroll, then no one can? Let's just scrap it? Why not instead dedicate resources to early childhood programs and mentorship in at-risk neighborhoods, the goal being equal opportunity, NOT equal outcome.
It is bizarre that an article like this even needs to be written.
This version of totalitarianism is only "soft" for now. In short order, it will become very brutal, hard, and unforgiving. While not a literary masterpiece, the book "Son of the Revolution" predicts our future by illustrating the past in the terror and ugliness of the Cultural Revolution in China. Perhaps it is no coincidence it is now happening in the US. We, in the US, are likely in for some very difficult and turbulent generations. I am deeply saddened to see what has become of the greatest country the world has ever known: a country that has done more good for more people in more places for a longer period of time than any country in history.
Not just the US, but the entire Anglosphere ("Five Eyes" if you like), and it seems some of Western Europe, too (Macron has just announced the closing of the ENA, École Nationale d’Administration). However, Central and Eastern Europe is less likely to suffer from Wokeism, partly because the languages are highly gendered and probably impervious to serious change in the way Wokeism does it (in Polish, even the verbs are gendered by their subject).
This insightful and scary story is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda about “Jewish physics” — as if particles know the religion with which the scientific theoretician affiliates and only respond according to that theory as long as the scientist is of acceptable social standing. Here is one revealing vignette in this regard:
“Because [Nobel Laureate Philipp Lenard] was not mathematically adept, he could not get to grips with relativity or quantum theory. As a result, he decided they were nonsense. The fact that this nonsense—whose premier architect was Einstein—was being accepted and acclaimed by physicists all over the world must therefore be the result of a conspiracy. And conspiracies and cabals were the specialty of Jews.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-2-pro-nazi-nobelists-attacked-einstein-s-jewish-science-excerpt1/
This was excellent. Please continue to share these voices.
Thank you for a breath of fresh air. This American Cultural Revolution is just sad - and what's the favorite expression of ideological academics everywhere - derivative. Math pun intended. I would have thought our totalitarians would be a little more original with their suffocating attempts to control us all.
I’m just a mom, but isn’t the whole point of showing your work to ensure that one understands the process of problem solving and individual statements of fact? Otherwise kids (like my son) would just copy the answer from the answer key and learn nothing. How is that “anti-racist”? So let’s encourage most kids not to actually learn? Bravo. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, propagated by a body of dunces who don’t under stand the real life necessity of mathematics in so many facets of modern life. As a mom, my children will be required to show their work FOREVER.
Showing your work also means you can explain it to someone else, and spread the knowledge around. It's also very, very helpful for kids like I was: a math prodigy for whom the correct answers would pop into my head with no clear explanation for how they got there and I honestly had a hard time explaining how I knew what the answer was. Without being made to explain WHY something was correct, I would have collapsed the second I ran into the one branch of mathematics I seem allergic to: statistics and probabilities. Even a gifted kid benefits from being compelled to show their work.
You aren’t “just” a mom. Clearly you are a person with critical thinking skills who is a great role model for your children and other people young and older. Clearly you are a person who cares about the future and sees the stupidity in this “woke” education agenda. And I think your line “My children will be required to show their work forever” is brilliant and could be a slogan and a rallying cry.
I think we need to grapple with the *fact* that there are some people that you can instruct on certain topics dozens of times and in dozens of different ways and they still cannot grasp them. And that inability to grasp concepts can be for a myriad of reasons. Some emotional, some intellectual, some medical, some personality disordered, etc., and often combinations of all of these factors. Yet the “woke” demand seems to be that we grind *everyone* down to this level of ineffectuality. Lowest common denominator as cure all for all of society’s ills.