evolution

The Raging RINO community has a lot of gold nuggets if you’re willing to pan through all the treachery (TREACHERY!). It turns out there is another RINO who is also a mathematician — as you know, I graduated in 2003 with a master’s degree in mathematics from Kansas State University, and taught a year of mathematics in a heretofore unidentified Kansas high school.

The other one, I discovered, is at Big Cat Chronicles - and its author, Roaring Tiger, writes about a subject that makes me want to vomit: ethnomathematics.

What is it? Ethnomathematics is what you know as mathematics, stuffed into the politically correct universe engineered by, well, the typical social engineers that become lifers at public schools. A better explanation is available in this Wall Street Journal article (which is behind a non-free password registration, available in part at Tiger’s site above):

In a comparison of a 1973 algebra textbook and a 1998 “contemporary mathematics” textbook, Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton found a dramatic change in topics. In the 1973 book, for example, the index for the letter “F” included “factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions, and functions.” In the 1998 book, the index listed “families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in fast food, feasibility study, feeding tours, ferris wheel, fish, fishing, flags, flight, floor plan, flower beds, food, football, Ford Mustang, franchises, and fund-raising carnival.”

Those were the days of innocent dumbing-down. Now mathematics is being nudged into a specifically political direction by educators who call themselves “critical theorists.” They advocate using mathematics as a tool to advance social justice. Social justice math relies on political and cultural relevance to guide math instruction. One of its precepts is “ethnomathematics,” that is, the belief that different cultures have evolved different ways of using mathematics, and that students will learn best if taught in the ways that relate to their ancestral culture. From this perspective, traditional mathematics — the mathematics taught in universities around the world — is the property of Western Civilization and is inexorably linked with the values of the oppressors and conquerors. The culturally attuned teacher will learn about the counting system of the ancient Mayans, ancient Africans, Papua New Guineans, and other “non-mainstream” cultures.

This is just bunk. Is, then, all of modern science, which derives directly from the mathematics of Einstein and Maxwell, which is built on the foundation of the ancient Greeks, and preserved and built up by African and Arab Muslims during Europe’s Dark Ages, which exploded during the Renaissance and cultural exchanges with China, then “inexorably linked with the values of the oppressors and conquerors?” I think not.

The mathematics curriculum administrator at my district was something of a believer in this garbage. The district I taught in implemented a number of “fad” curricula, which they claimed were “research-based” (an utterly-meaningless term used to extract money out of clueless state legislators) based on this nonsense.

How can I claim this is nonsense out of hand? By my own experience. I have had the privilege of teaching bright students from around the world and just about every conceivable culture on Earth. Nothing I have seen leads me to believe that any amount of “social justice” added to mathematics makes it easier on anyone to learn. In fact, I think some of it frustrates the brighter kids, who despite their public image thanks to the clueless media, want more, more, more.

The truth is, many members of national organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics are former public school teachers or administrators - a group that I’d say is about 90% white, affluent liberals. Many of them seem to feel some sort of guilt at these circumstances; maybe some of it is warranted. At our high school, we had two black administrators (out of five), two black district administrators (including the superintendent), and two black teachers out of about 120. Half of all our students are black, and a great many others belonged to some other ethnic minority. I noticed it. I’m sure our students did too. They aren’t stupid.

Let’s not treat them as though they are by promoting this garbage. Let’s teach them a real skill, free from politics. Let’s prepare them for college, and careers in science and engineering, and God forbid, teaching. We aren’t doing that now. Here’s why other countries lap us in math and science while district administrators pat themselves on the back and brag about how “progressive” they are:

It seems terribly old-fashioned to point out that the countries that regularly beat our students in international tests of mathematics do not use the subject to steer students into political action. They teach them instead that mathematics is a universal language that is as relevant and meaningful in Tokyo as it is in Paris, Nairobi and Chicago. The students who learn this universal language well will be the builders and shapers of technology in the 21st century. The students in American classes who fall prey to the political designs of their teachers and professors will not.

They will not. And, considering current employment trends, young Indian and Chinese men and women live comfortably on jobs in science and engineering, while our kids will be scanning the want-ads. We, who do not pay attention to the votes to elect the people that hire these misguided folks, are not minding the store. Remember that when Social Security collapses.