White Liberals Are Here To Save You From Math!
(THE BELOW ARE TWO POSTS COMBINE FROM MARCH OF 2014 AND THE OTHER 2-YEARS AGO)
Dennis Prager reads from Fox News’ [and the original sources as well] article: “Oregon Promotes Teacher Program That Seeks to Undo ‘Racism In Mathematics‘”. The idea that Mathematics can be used to promote “equity” is older than this idea… see my, “Chicago Teachers Union President Politicizes Math“.
Some Comments via My Upload:
- …need to be kept away from any space program.
- It’s only going to make the difference in math scores more prominent because people who can afford private schools or can homeschool will make the public school kids more behind.
- Besides, who would want to hire a contractor who doesn’t get the right math answers.
Read the POST-MILLENNIAL for more. You can also track where Critical Race Theory is taught in schools at CRITICALRACE.ORG.
(Click to enlarge)
However, the best article I read so far on the topic is over at MISES INSTITUTE:
[….]
- “From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, together with Ancient Egypt and Ebla[,] began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry.”
- “Chinese mathematics made early contributions, including a place value system and the first use of negative numbers.”
- “The Hindu-Arabic numeral system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today, evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and were transmitted to the Western world via Islamic mathematics…. Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations. Contemporaneous with but independent of these traditions were the mathematics developed by the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, where the concept of zero was given a standard symbol in Maya numerals.”
- “[O]ur knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets…. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. Some of these appear to be graded homework.”
- “Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems.”
- “The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text is the Rhind papyrus, dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document…. It is an instruction manual for students in arithmetic and geometry. In addition to giving area formulas and methods for multiplication, division and working with unit fractions, it also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge.”
- “Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures…. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.”
- “In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote an important book on the Hindu–Arabic numerals and one on methods for solving equations … instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works.”
Rather than representing “white supremacy,” the evolution of mathematics has been a globe-, race-, and culture-spanning collaboration of advancements, an ongoing development of more effective tools for anyone to use. And that history shows that all of those involved wanted to get the answers right, where having to show your work has been a millennia-old strategy for mathematics education……
MORE CRITICAL RACE THEORY, RACISM
HOT AIR has some more hits via the racism of critical theory:
The San Francisco School Board has been in the news a lot recently. First it was controversy over the decision to rename 44 schools in the district. Then it was the decision to get rid of selective admissions at their best performing high school on the grounds that meritocracy is racist.
Over the weekend, the board took another hit in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle when columnist Heather Knight relayed the story of a volunteer who wanted to become part of the board’s Parent Advisory Committee. Seth Brenzel would have been the only gay member of the group and the only man, but after discussing it for two solid hours the school board rejected him because he’s white:
All of the 10 current members are straight moms. Three are white. Three are Latina. Two are Black. One is Tongan. They all want the dad to join them.
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white…
The Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club on Friday slammed the board for its “misguided fumbling towards a goal of diversity.”
The person who was perhaps the most stunned was Seth Brenzel, the gay dad whose daughter is a fourth-grader at Glen Park Elementary. “At any moment, I expected a commissioner to address me,” he said, “because there I was.”
The board never asked Brenzel a single question. Instead he sat there, his face being broadcast on the zoom meeting, while the board decided he didn’t belong in the voluntary position because a white male ticked the wrong social justice boxes. This important conversation dragged on while about 500 parents were waiting to hear about school reopening plans.
The board’s focus on woke messaging over student well-being continues…
[….]
The board’s focus on woke decision making over addressing actual problems has become so absurd that even some Democrats see it as self-parody:
“We’ve become parodies of ourselves,’’ said Democratic strategist Brian Brokaw, who recounted Republican friends good-naturedly jabbing him as the developments became a running joke on the political scene. “It’s counterproductive in so many ways.”
San Francisco parents and their kids are paying a steep price for electing these woke ideologues to the school board.
Dateline Wednesday March 19, 2014 – Portland Oregon: Portland Public Schools teachers participated in a training session where a controversial new curriculum including “Critical Race Theory,” is explained. The curriculum is currently implemented in three charter schools at the K-5, middle school and high school level. The curriculum is expected to be rolled out to all schools in the Portland Public School System: thus the training.
BONUS OREGON FLASHBACK
Oregon to Ban Employers From Asking About Felonies: A statewide “Ban the Box” effort is underway which will prohibit employers from asking dangerous felons about their criminal records on job applications.
This (the above and below) comes from EAG.org, here is part of the post by them, which can be linked to below:
…EAGnews has previously reported about the social justice math activists’ tricks in a book called “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers,” edited by Peterson.
The book includes “lessons and essays about racial profiling, environmental racism, unfair mortgage lending practices of Big Banks, the ‘overabundance of liquor stores’ in minority communities, and slave-owning U.S. presidents,” EAGnews’ Ben Velderman wrote.
“The book’s other major theme is that capitalism’s unequal distribution of wealth is the root cause of the world’s suffering. Students learn to despise free market economics in lessons about third-world sweatshops, ‘living wage’ laws, the earnings of fast food workers and restaurant CEOs, and the ‘hidden’ costs of meat production,” Velderman reported.
In the book, Peterson explains his rationale for attacking the American narrative:
“I figure that if kids start questioning the ‘official story’ early on, they will be more open to alternative viewpoints later on. While discovering which presidents were slave owners is not an in-depth analysis, it pokes an important hole in the godlike mystique that surrounds the ‘founding fathers.’”
Unionists now can’t even leave math alone and have hijacked it to push their own political agenda.
Thank goodness a growing number of parents have access to charter schools, cyberschools, voucher schools and homeschools – all of which provide an alternative to government schools, many of which have been infiltrated by left-wing activists like Lewis and Peterson.
(EAG NEWS)