These people are cuckoo birds:
Why physics?Even more than other sciences, physics is a white male dominated field and, thus, a mirror of colonial patterns and social inequality. Despite this fact, physics is considered as “hard” and objective science, disconnected from social life and geopolitical history. This narrative both constitutes and reproduces inequality, which is reflected by the underrepresentation of women, racialized people, and Indigenous peoples in physics.
Why light?Light is ubiquitous in every language, society and culture. Light is the key element of common life defining familiar aspects like color and warmth. In physics, light is both regarded as primary carrier of information on nature (e.g. in astronomy) and exploited as primary probe for the fundamental properties of nature (e.g. in spectroscopy). Everybody knows light and every culture has knowledge about light. However, only the physical knowledge is regarded as scientific. We are interested in investigating how colonial scientific knowledge authority was and is still reproduced in the context of light.
How to decolonize?Decolonizing Light follows complementary approaches: We are engaging Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies for knowledge creation, we are studying colonial anchor points in the history of physics in the context of light, we are studying the views of scientists on colonialism, we’re investigating the discourse on contemporary largescale light experiments, we are training Indigenous and racialized students to do research in synchrotrons, and we are encouraging and training Indigenous and racialized students to follow research questions which are not defined by us but by themselves.
I have no words for the crazy. I see a bunch of multi-disciplinary, modern, progressive academics proudly virtue signaling.
ReplyDeleteAnd these people get FUNDING for this?
Canadian taxpayer dollars working hard to keep "progressives" off the street, I suppose.
We're going to end up with a generation of graduates who have no idea how things work. As a result we're going to see massive failures in western culture to develop the technologies needed to solve the actual problems that exist. These people are nuts. What is more you can't talk to them because they are incapable of recognizing how insane their policies are in regards to actual math and science.
ReplyDeleteThis post hit home for many reasons. This is just another example of the cancerous ideology and insanity that has taken over physics education.
ReplyDeleteI belong to a professional organization that was, once upon a time, considered to be the best professional development provider in physics. Over time this organization has morphed into a very woke, far left political organization ran by far left white liberal women who say things like "we should treat students of color like victims of trauma". They also pick fights with people who post on the listserve accusing them of "racism, misogyny, bigotry", or whatever they feel like picking a fight about. The organization is losing money because members stopped donating and they can't figure out why.
Three years ago, the organization asked physics teachers from around the country to submit photos of themselves in the classroom and the winner's photo would be the one published on the book cover. When the original winner was announced, the woke mob went absolutely nuts. The photograph chosen was that of a white male teaching a group of students (that may or may not have been white.) The woke mob raised such a stink and went after the physics teacher who submitted that photo to harass him for a lack of diversity. A woke teacher responded by sending in her picture showing "diversity" - a group of students who were all asian females. They ended up changing the picture on the book cover to something very generic.
Many of us are too scared to say anything because these same vicious leftists do things like dox, harass, and come after you. Some of them brag on Twitter about contacting employers and HR to "call out racism" and get the person fired.
On Twitter, these very same people who are responsible for teaching physics to children are whining about "injustices": complaining about racism in math and science, complaining about Trump even though he's been gone for months, complaining about the governor of whatever state they live in because they have to go back to in person instruction, complaining about their school board for COVID numbers and how they want a pay raise for having to teach online and another pay raise for having to go back in person, complaining about the stimulus check, complaining about Elon Musk for not being woke enough, complaining about Fortnight being a racist game because dancing is "cultural appropriation", etc.
The worst comment came from a physics teacher that was whining about having to up his antidepressant medication dosage and spending the week in a hospital due to having a conniption because another shopper didn't wear a mask at the supermarket and came too close to him (oh no! a "superspreader"!) This guy was fired from his public school job because he refused to teach in person. That resulted in many virtual pats on the back from his echo chamber twitter friends for being "so brave".
A different physics teacher professional organization stated on twitter that they would "not hold their conferences in any city with racist cops". This was retweeted several times by the same people I described above. They were all patting themselves on the back and praising each other in their twitter echo chamber for being so virtuous.
As I looked over the list of "researchers" on the website you linked, I recognized one person on there. This person is a die hard militant socialist and that's all I'll say for fear of doxxing myself. These people contribute absolutely nothing to innovation or society. They are bored academics trying to be significant in a world where normally, they'd be laughed into oblivion.
Excellent article by Bari Weiss about woke schools. (This focuses mostly on elite private schools in California and New York City.)
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