An Army of Straw Man

Seattle's schools are looking at infusing anti-white racism into their math curriculum.  Doing so doesn't make any sense, and neither do some of their justifications:

If a student got the right answer, we should celebrate that ingenuity and intelligence instead of telling them there is only one way to get to that right answer.

Anyone who teaches that there is only one way to get a correct answer is probably either hidebound or incompetent, neither of which has anything to do with mathematics.

When too many black and Latino students see no place for themselves in math and science, Castro-Gill said, it’s important to be explicit about how their own cultures contribute to math and how they can use it to make their communities, and the world, better.

Modern black and Latino culture doesn't contribute to today's math.  Neither does modern white and/or American culture.  Castro-Gill, "Seattle’s ethnic studies director", is an idiot.

“What they’re doing follows the line of work we hope we can move forward as we think about the history of math and who contributes to that, and also about deepening students’ connection with identity and agency.”

What say that, instead, we work on deepening students' understanding of mathematics?  That's what you'd do if you really wanted to help them, truly wanted to give them a better-than-average chance in the adult world.  "Agency"?  I do not think that means what you think it means.

Ethnomathematics, which studies the intersection of math and culture, took shape in the late 1970s, introduced by Brazilian math professor Ubiratàn D’Ambrosio. Leading thinkers in the field now include Linda Furuto at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and Filiberto Barajas-López at the University of Washington’s school of education in Seattle.

More recently, some scholars, most prominently Rochelle Gutiérrez at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, have begun advocating for a “rehumanizing” of mathematics, which places dynamics such as race and oppression at the center of conversations about math and culture.

I've argued many times against so-called ethnomathematics, especially the views of Paolo Friere.  (What is it with those Brazilians, anyway?)   The argument is always the same--math is a tool.  It's neither good nor bad.  It can be put to use for good or for evil.  If you're not good at using that tool, it's not the tool's fault.  There's no race and oppression going on here except in the feeble minds of people who look for it where it doesn't exist.  Orwell taught us that 2+2=4, and from that all other freedoms flow.  Such a view is oppressive only to those who choose to believe it so.

“Math education has been very focused on access and closing the achievement gap, around grit and growth mindset. Those ideas are centered around individuals, and ways of thinking they need to adopt. We haven’t focused enough on identity or systems of power,” Gutiérrez said. 

It should be focused on adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions, decimals, and percents.  Those who master those simple topics will have the world at their door.  Those who don't will complain that people aren't knocking on their door--why, because everyone else is racist, or something?

Starting the conversation with a sigh, he said it’s too bad that Seattle blended important ideas with highly controversial ones.

“We all want students of color to be included, believe they can learn math, and see themselves as mathematicians,” he said. “It’s important for them to learn about great contributions to mathematics from all cultures—Indian and Chinese and Babylonian.

“But you don’t need to talk about liberation and oppression and how Western mathematics has somehow taken over. It just turns people off and makes the goal of being inclusive that much tougher.”

Very little of our mathematics focuses on where on the planet our current conceptions derive from.  I'm not interested in teaching social studies, although some of the history is very interesting.  I'm interested in teaching mathematics, not social studies, not social justice, not politics and oppression.  Save that stuff for the race hustlers.

By the way, I'll bet today's Indians and Chinese--not to mention the Koreans and the Singaporeans and even the vaunted (in the education world) Finns--are shaking their heads at such silliness coming out of the United States.