And why do you capitalize the name of a none existent being? — Sir2u

That's normally done at the beginning of a sentence. Jesus....

But math is a white invention. That can't be denied! — Hillary

Denied. :rofl: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics

You don't think that there is a history of numbers and god does not exist, so where did numbers come from. — Sir2u

It's not about numbers but what the mathematicians, mainly white did with them. Just look at the history of math. There are excellent black physicist or mathematicians, but they are by far in the minority. It's got a white aura.

Denied. :rofl: — 180 Proof

:rofl:

god never gets capitalized in my sentences. Screw the grammar police. :lol:

:rofl:

sAY AGAIN! sCrew gOD!

So, for example, financial redlining, which long predates "Ethnic Studies", isn't systemic racial discrimination?

There are excellent black physicist or mathematicians, but they are by far in the minority. — Hillary

White taxi drivers are also a minority, should we call for an investigation into the racism of taxis as well?

Is there really any solid evidence that white people are keeping black people out of math and related areas? Just saying that there are only a few does not prove racism.

sAY AGAIN! — Hillary

god never gets capitalized in my sentences. Screw the grammar police. :lol: — Sir2u

"these neighborhoods have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities"

How mathematical is that already? :lol:

:rofl:

sAy agAin: gOD sUcks!

Okay, serious now. I can see I have bad influence! I politely back off! Continue.

sAy agAin: gOD sUcks! — Hillary

You are going too far now, I only said that god never gets capitalized. I never said that I do not follow the rest of the grammar rules. :rofl:

You are going too far now, I only said that god never gets capitalized — Sir2u

his son got Capital punishment! We're drifting off...

Less than 1% of all mathematicians is Afro-American. Mary Jackson and David Blackwell are among the best!

Here is an article that is disturbing, at least for me, an old retired prof. What do you think? — jgill

I think you need to know that the author of that article , Jason Rantz, is a right wing propagandist not known for his journalistic integrity. Is there any legitimate basis for his claims? While there may well be, please, for my sake, do your homework and find a more well researched and impartial source to post here so I dont have to be exposed to Rantz’s inane scratchings.

( like this from the Washington Post:

Is math racist? Wrong question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/15/is-math-racist-public-school-pedagogy/

I was just talking about Math.

All of us, black and white, and yellow, and red, are stuck with the mad inventions of a bunch of white guys and the tradition started in ancient Greek.

I was just talking about Math. — NOS4A2

Oh, right, and finance isn't applied math. :roll:

I took a gander through the actual materials linked in the article and .. it's really not that bad. Most of it has to do with pedagogy in general rather than any specific mathematical practice. The advice they list is really quite trans-disciplinary. Eg:

Too often students are tracked based on the notion that adults know what the right thing is for them, which does not allow room for student agency, reinforcing paternalism and powerhoarding. Often, placement into different tracks reflect subjective metrics of innate ability without acknowledging prior opportunities or experiences. Following the same vein, leadership often decides which teacher is right for which course without allowing input from the teachers, students, or parents.

While access to grade-level content for every student is the responsibility of schools and essential for equity, a focus on content alone is insufficient for achieving meaningful mathematical power for all students. When only focusing on content without applying a culturally responsive lens or strategic scaffolding, there is a risk of perpetuating white supremacy culture and inequities. A hyperfocus on individual standards requires teachers to function under a system of urgency to “cover” all the material that will be on the test and not focus on actual learning of the big ideas. This approach is not only disengaging, it also limits opportunities for teachers to connect the content to students’ lives in meaningful, relevant ways.

"Best practices" for math pedagogy often exclude the unique needs of Black, Latinx and multilingual or migrant students. This reinforces either/or thinking by reinforcing stereotypes about the type of mathematical education that certain groups of students receive. It allows the defensiveness of Western mathematics to prevail, without addressing underlying causes of why certain groups of students are “underperforming,” a characterization that should also be interrogated. It also presupposes that “good” math teaching is about a Eurocentric type of mathematics, devoid of cultural ways of being.

https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf

Like, sure, some of this might be quite contestable, but it's quite a far fry from 'math is racist'.

Examples of advice for classroom practice:

Provide students with opportunities to give feedback to teachers about the classroom and instruction.

• Verbal Example: Fist to five, How well do you understand what we talked about today? Fist to five, How well did I teach this today?
• Classroom Activity: Exit tickets or surveys that ask students to identify how well teachers taught, what helped them learn, what got in the way of their learning, etc.
• Professional Development: Conduct regular surveys and disaggregate data on teacher practices.

--

Incorporate the history of mathematics into lessons.

• Verbal Example: Why do you think we call it Pythagorean’s theorem, when it was used before he was even born? What should we call it instead?
• Classroom Activity: Learn about different bases and numerical ideas: Base 2, binary and connections to computer programming, how the Yoruba of Nigeria used base 20, and how the Mayans conceptualized the number 0 before the first recording of it.
• Professional Development: Learn the history of mathematics. Take a course, go to a conference, read historically and culturally accurate books, and use the resources in this workbook. Focus on different approaches to learning concepts.

--

Consider what grades really mean to you, and articulate a plan that is consistent with those values.

• Professional Development: As a department, consider how you would proceed with teaching if no letter grades were to be given. Review alternative ways of grading (standards based, mastery based, A/B no pass, etc.). Emphasize formative assessment.
• Professional Development: As a department, review current assessment and grading practices to determine what values are reinforced for the purpose of making grades more purposeful.
• Professional Development: Develop formative assessments that highlight student knowledge rather than deficit knowledge. Consider bringing in experts to help design this.

So uh, yeah, if anything thinks this amounts to 'math is racist' then they are pretty straightforwardly wrong.

My first few years as an asst prof I taught college algebra out of a textbook by Vance, I think. It incorporated the "New Math", an idea that had mostly expired by then. I tried to maintain a level of enthusiasm, but it was heavy going as I dealt with simple rules like a+0=a. The thrust of this pedagogical experiment was to introduce abstract underpinnings for the rote procedures previously championed. I suspect the NM did more to separate the superior math talented from those having average math intellects than anything since - the latter group losing what little interest in the subject they had to begin with. Perhaps the opposite of what is described in the article except for discovery notions.

The NM was an idea broadly supported by math professionals in universities, whereas the reform ideas advanced by advocates of approaches described in the article have little support amongst the professorial class. Hmmm.

Wiki:

Topics introduced in the New Math include set theory, modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra.[2] All of the New Math projects emphasized some form of discovery learning.[3] Students worked in groups to invent theories about problems posed in the textbooks. Materials for teachers described the classroom as "noisy." Part of the job of the teacher was to move from table to table assessing the theory that each group of students had developed and "torpedoing" wrong theories by providing counterexamples.

No, math is not racist. But the following from a Seattle Public School document seems to ignore the fact that "Western" mathematics is the only kind that really works in the modern world. Historical contributions certainly came from many cultural sources, but we are beyond cuneiform impressions on clay tablets. I taught math history on occasion and relished the discussion of Omar Khayyam, one of the ancestors of the subject I explored.

Power and oppression, as defined by
ethnic studies, are the ways in which
individuals and groups define
mathematical knowledge so as to see
“Western” mathematics as the only
legitimate expression of mathematical
identity and intelligence. This definition
of legitimacy is then used to
disenfranchise people and
communities of color. This erases the
historical contributions of people and
communities of color.

Certainly, mathematics at any level can be taught in such a way that students are permanently turned off the subject. The same goes for history, literature, woodworking, chemistry, Spanish--any subject. Who of us has not, at some point, been the recipient of bad pedagogy? Negative attitudes? Official disinterest in our success in life?

That math is or can be racist is not a concept worth discussing. That the experience of students in schools can be racially demeaning, given local racist values, given that a lot of bad pedagogy is practiced, and given that the community from which some students come may not be interested in education, is very much worth discussing.

There is a good film illustrating great math instruction: Stand And Deliver, the story of Jaime Escalante, a high school teacher who successfully inspired his dropout-prone students to learn calculus. Escalante used good pedagogy, but he also brought a great deal of commitment to his classroom.

Is there a secret teaching method which will almost always produce great results? I certainly don't know it. I am quite certain that schools can do better, but not without rather big changes in the whole project.

The trajectory of an explosive shell, a parabola, isn't affected by race, nor is the area of its kill zone, nor the nature of the injuries sustained by shrapnel from it.

That said, one pontential source of danger is math's (claim of) objectivity.

Troll

I taught at the college level for many years and never thought of the subject or my teaching strategies as racist, but I know only a little of how math is taught K-9. Here is an article that is disturbing, at least for me, an old retired prof. What do you think? — jgill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory

A key CRT concept is intersectionality—the way in which different forms of inequality and identity are affected by interconnections of race, class, gender and disability.[6] Scholars of CRT view race as a social construct with no biological basis. One tenet of CRT is that racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals.

This has nothing to do with math, instead math is being used as a tool to mathematically prove something which victims of racism do not like.

The question is, can victims of racism make CRT mathematical formula wrong?

Critical Theory is pretty nebulous, non-specific and based on little to no empirical evidence. It is a way of looking at things and asking questions, but not much more.

CRT is use of a pretty flimsy idea applied to a highly contentious subject matter.

It seems to me the whole math thing was initiated by right leaning people based on some absurd idea that mathematics is racist :D

CRT, and CT in general, should be taken too seriously at all. They are just proposals for ways of looking at social interactions and social structures. It is not a ‘theory’ in the sense that evolution is a theory … not even close!

As a visual indicator, we italicize the terms used to identify white supremacy characteristics as defined by Jones and Okun (2001). They are as follows:
• Perfectionism
• Sense of Urgency
• Defensiveness
• Quantity Over Quality
• Worship of the Written Word • Paternalism
• Either/Or Thinking
• Power Hoarding
• Fear of Open Conflict
• Individualism
• Only One Right Way
• Progress is Bigger, More
• Objectivity
• Right to Comfort

https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf

So, obviously, if one applies a minimum of charitable interpretation, it is the style and institution of education that is in question, rather than the topic itself. And it is part of a much wider analysis of the legacy culture of capitalism that grew out of slavery.

Now obviously again, if one changes the implicit values of an education system that serves a particular society that education will fail to serve that same society, by the measure of its own values. This is an excellent argument against all progress, beloved by conservatives.

The article is another right-wing hatchet job on critical race theory that refuses to even imagine that societies' values might change - The American Way is the only way and nothing better can be conceived.

Sorry, I don't understand. Was the journalist in the OP article saying maths teaching isn't racist? And who is saying it is? Critical Race Theory isn't a particular view is it? Are some Critical Race Theorists (if they exist - I don't know anything about it) saying the Maths curriculum is racist? If so, is it because, for example, we call it Pythagoras's theorem when it in fact wasn't pythagoras who first came up with it? (Thanks Street for doing some looking up). If the idea was around before pythagoras, it makes sense to acknowledge that doesn't it?

Sorry, I could probably answer all my own questions with some googling, it'll just take me ages.

capitalism that grew out of slavery. — unenlightened

Slavery has never been as refined and hypocrite as nowadays. It wears a deceiving free world mask.