By Milt Harris ——Bio and Archives--July 28, 2023
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When I was in junior high school, one of my teachers told me that “math is your friend.” To which I responded, “well it’s not my friend.” He then said something that I will never forget. He told me think about it, “math is the only subject that will always have an answer.” At the time I wasn’t a big fan of math, but the idea that the correct answer was out there and all I had to do was find it, had never occurred to me before. It was all about perspective, and as I started my professional career, math did indeed become my friend. I used it every day in ways that I had never dreamed of when I was back in school.
My point is this, when I was in school, math just didn’t interest me. Back then my grades weren’t great in it and that was the reason. Other kids were great at math, not because they were smarter than me, they just applied themselves and they liked it more. Once I was in college, it started to click. I got better at it because I had to. I had no choice since I was using it in one form or another every day.
Today, rather than telling students the truth, the left is trying to convince students that math is racist. Rather than engaging them in the importance of math in life, they are implying that the reason certain students are better at math has to do with their race. Nothing could be further from the truth and the radical left knows it. They are openly teaching that Black, Indigenous and People Of Color (BIPOC) can’t learn math at the same rate as whites.
California is a case in point. For that matter, isn’t California and a few other states where these types of cancers always begin? I have long ago abandoned the belief that liberal leftist elites don’t know what they’re doing. They know exactly what they are doing. They initiate and instigate these beliefs and then activate their army of useful idiots to implement their agenda. School boards are one of the left’s favorite wind-up toys. They send the craziness down the line and watch gleefully as they dutifully hire blue haired fools that hate everything and can’t wait to instil that same disgust for life and country into your children.
California has adopted their 2023 K-12 math curriculum. Too bad that their curriculum has so little to do with actual math. However, in typical liberal fashion it’s filled with “social excuses” and untrue cultural rhetoric. The framework includes “equitable and engaging” guidance that implores teachers to “teach towards social justice” and in what they call “culturally responsible ways” that “draw on student’s backgrounds.”
The Curriculum states:
"Students' perceptions of their capacity to succeed in mathematics are shaped by messaging from teachers and society. Many efforts in recent years have focused on increasing rates of success among members of historically underrepresented groups in mathematical fields. These include expanded professional training in effective pedagogical practices as well as greater attention on role models and kinds of materials used in the classroom."
Huh?
Math is the least ambiguous subject that is taught on any level. To state it simply, “it is what it is.” How can you teach math, by not actually teaching math? Clearly, the far left wants minorities to believe that math is racist and that is their excuse to continuing the dumbing down process. By acting as “social justice warriors” instead of educators, they advance the left’s agenda and leave the education of the children behind in a cloud of phony racist dust.
The intentional victims here are the underperforming BIPOC students. The crime committed against them is known as the “crime of low expectations.” Almost every student knows the gut churning tension of needing to do well on a test, or in a particular subject to pass. Those expectations and the fear of failing spur us on to do more, so we can do better. Those emotions are an integral part of human nature. The left’s methodology deliberately removes those expectations and when nothing is expected, nothing is achieved. By using race as a convenient excuse, they eliminate the desire and drive necessary to progress and achieve. It’s despicably deceptive and morally culpable.
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In 2021, the Oregon Department of Education promoted an online course for math teachers called, A Pathway to Math Equity Micro-Course. The supposed intent was to teach the social justice warriors how to "dismantle instances of white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom."
In 2020, Laurie Rubel, a liberal social justice warrior that teaches at Brooklyn College, actually went as far as to tweet that asking whether two plus two equals four: “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy. Y’all must know that the idea that math is objective or neutral IS A MYTH.”
Really? Funny, before his death the black economist Walter Williams said, "I would like to see the proof, in any culture, that two plus two is something other than four."
Teaching used to be about preparing students not just to enter the work force, but if possible to eventually excel in life. The baseline for that is a sound foundation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). The American education system is failing and there are no rational excuses that can be offered by those who are responsible.
I am so thankful my children completed their education before teaching disintegrated into the disrepair it finds itself in today. No country has all of the advantages that America has and yet through the lens of the left, the focus is constantly on the negative.
Malcome Forbes said: “The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
Too bad the Marxist justice warriors don’t adhere to that enlightened approach.
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Milt spent thirty years as a sales and operations manager for an international manufacturing company. He is also a four-time published author on a variety of subjects. Now, he spends most of his time researching and writing about conservative politics and liberal folly.