If there’s one academic subject sure to contain objective determinations of right and wrong, it’s math. But Katya Sedgwick writes for the Federalist about a bizarre application of politics to mathematics.
When a blogger of American Mathematical Society writes of the urgent need for math to be “antiracist,” it’s time to start worrying. In the post, blogger Tian An describes his experience teaching college-level methodology class to non-math majors, attempting to employ a social justice curriculum. …
… An did not go into specifics of his class, but when the Washington state superintendent of public instructions developed a curriculum along the same lines last year, it published the details online. Because of the “urgent need for anti-racist education,” the superintendent’s office produced Seattle Public Schools’ Math Ethnic Studies Framework aimed at “resist[ing] and liberat[ing] people and communities of color from oppression.” …
… The office of Seattle’s superintendent, for instance, rather hilariously created an ethnic studies math chart, complete with categories such as, “Can you suggest resolutions to oppressive mathematical practices?” and “history of resistance and liberation.” It explains what “dictates economic oppression,” that test scores are racist, and how to discuss when a person knows or feels he’s finally become a mathematician.
In this story- and experience-driven exercise, feelings are all that count. The program leaves the impression that the people creating it were probably instructed by teachers who learned “new math” in grade schools and, therefore, are clueless about what to do with it.
For instance, the superintendent wants students to develop something he calls “math identity.” I like math very much, yet never did it occur to me to develop something called “math identity.” So, what should it be? Pythagoras? Fermat’s Theorem? A non-binary square root sign? The intersection of Fermat’s theorem and a non-binary square root?
