No, It Doesn't Add Up

Rather than teaching math (which is haaaaaard), there are some on the left who think we should abandon math and teach social justice instead.  After all, if everything in education is political, we should infuse politics into every corner of our curriculum.  A contributor to Forbes certainly sees it that way:

According to math scores in the 2019 nation’s report card, only 41% of 4th graders are proficient in math, and only 34% of 8th graders are. These numbers, which have not moved much since 2009 are dismal on their surface. Digging deeper, when these results are broken out by race and ethnicity, only 20% of Black and 26% of Hispanic students are proficient. These damning results show that something is clearly something wrong with math education in the United States.

Fortunately, initiatives like Seattle Public Schools’ ethnic studies framework for math might very well be part of the solution. As Daniel T. Willingham recently noted in his piece, Math scares your child’s elementary school teacher – and that should frighten you, math competence has three important components: memorizing math facts, knowing algorithms to solve problems, and knowing why these algorithms work. Teachers must possess deep conceptual understanding of math topics to transfer this depth of understanding to students. But our students’ inherent sense of justice and fairness can be a powerful motivator to set this deeper learning into action. 

If elementary school teachers are not good math teachers, swapping math for so-called social justice isn't going to make anyone any better at math.  It might make some incompetents feel better about themselves, because teaching racial hatred is certainly easier than teaching multiplication, fractions, decimals, and percents, but it's not going to do any good for students.

The fairness and justice aspect of so-called “woke math” is not about indoctrination. It’s about tapping into the same inherent sense of human curiosity that compels us to binge-watch shows like Law and Order, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and whatever dark murder mystery is trending on Netflix nowadays. I can learn about the radius of a circle and do typical classroom activities where I’m finding the circumference of a jar. Or, my teachers can use the concept of a radius to have me think about my proximity to a grocery store where healthy food options are available to help me understand the concept of food deserts.  

Anyone who thinks that such instruction isn't about indoctrination is either a liar or a fool.  There is no middle ground there.  If you think there wouldn't be an extreme bias to the left in such "instruction", imagine the howls and shrieks if I were to imbue my own instruction with slightly right-leaning data.  No, we can't have any "inherent sense of justice and fairness" if it doesn't comport with left-wing dogma, can we?  And the author even provides an example:

Even the student who is not a “math person” can be compelled to care very deeply about underlying conceptual foundations of ratio and proportions when we apply it to the equity questions regarding the electoral college and the Founding Fathers’ grand compromise of giving every state equal representation in the United States Senate. 

I'm not convinced that elementary school students are truly capable of the critical thinking that is inherent in the concept of "food deserts", the Connecticut Compromise, or the electoral college.  If they are, they seem to lose that capacity by the time they get to high school, as I can attest from experience with my own students.  This plan is absolutely intended to be left-wing indoctrination and nothing else.

Math instruction should be about learning math.  If you have to ponder the existence of food deserts, representation in the Senate, etc., in school, social studies classes are the appropriate venue.