#woke math

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘science’. There is only ‘German science’, ‘Jewish science’ etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs – and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.

But is it perhaps childish or morbid to terrify oneself with visions of a totalitarian future? Before writing off the totalitarian world as a nightmare that can’t come true, just remember that in 1925 the world of today would have seemed a nightmare that couldn’t come true. Against that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree, there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it in ways that impair military efficiency. The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.

-- George Orwell, "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)

Eerie.

[ Note: In 1949, Orwell subsequently wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. ]

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"One of the key contributions of critical theorists concerns the production of knowledge. Given that the transmission of knowledge is an integral activity in schools, critical scholars in the field of education have been especially concerned with how knowledge is produced. These scholars argue that a key element of social injustice involves the claim that particular knowledge is objective, neutral, and universal. An approach based on critical theory calls into question the idea that objectivity is desirable or even possible. The term used to describe this way of thinking about knowledge is that knowledge is socially constructed. When we refer to knowledge as socially constructed we mean that knowledge is reflective of the values and interests of those who produce it."

-- Ozlem Sensoy/Robin DiAngelo, "Is Everyone Really Equal?"

By: Faith Bottum

Published: Aug 19, 2023

The California State Board of Education issued on July 12 a new framework for teaching math based on what it calls “updated principles of focus, coherence, and rigor.” The word “updated” is certainly accurate. Not so much “principles,” “focus,” “coherence” or “rigor.” California’s new approach to math is as unfair as it is unserious.

The framework is voluntary, but it will heavily influence school districts and teachers around the Golden State. Developed over the past four years, it runs nearly 1,000 pages. Among the titles of its 14 chapters are “Teaching for Equity and Engagement,” “Structuring School Experiences for Equity and Engagement” and “Supporting Educators in Offering Equitable and Engaging Mathematics Instruction.” The guidelines demand that math teachers be “committed to social justice work” to “equip students with a toolkit and mindset to identify and combat inequities with mathematics”—not with the ability to do math. Far more important is teaching students that “mathematics plays a role in the power structures and privileges that exist within our society.”

California’s education bureaucrats are seeking to reinvent math as a grievance study. “Big ideas are central to the learning of mathematics,” the framework insists, but the only big idea the document promotes is that unequal outcomes in math performance are proof of a racist society.

To achieve equal outcomes, the framework favors the elimination of “tracking,” by which it means the practice of identifying students with the potential to do well. This supposedly damages the mental health of low-achieving students. The problem is that some students simply are better at math than others. To close the gap, the authors of the new framework have decided essentially to eliminate calculus—and to hold talented students back.

The framework recommends that Algebra I not be taught in middle school, which would force the course to be taught in high school. But if the students all take algebra as freshmen, there won’t be time to fit calculus into a four-year high-school program. And that’s the point: The gap between the best and worst math students will become less visible.

As written, the framework appears to violate the California Mathematics Placement Act of 2015, which requires proper courses for advanced students. A petition signed by roughly 6,000 parents and other concerned citizens may have spurred the drafters of the framework to add an amendment that reads, “Students may take Algebra 1 or Mathematics 1 in middle school.” But the completed document still pushes students not to take algebra in middle school. Instead, the framework recommends investigating whether the traditional five-year progression—Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Precalculus (including trigonometry) and Calculus—could be shortened so students would still be able to take calculus during senior year. As it stands now, students must either double up or enroll in a summer course to be able to take calculus—or go to a private school, which students from underprivileged backgrounds can’t afford to do.

A growing opposition from college professors should embarrass the Board of Education. More than 400 professors were incensed by a proposed data-science course as a math track that students might follow instead of Algebra II. “For students to be prepared for STEM and other quantitative majors in 4-year colleges . . . learning Algebra II in high school is essential,” they wrote in an open letter. “This cannot be replaced with a high-school statistics or data-science course, due to the cumulative nature of mathematics.”

Brian Conrad, a mathematics professor at Stanford, has created a website to debunk the framework. He writes that the California framework “selectively cites research to make points it wants to make,” and that it “contains false or misleading descriptions of many citations from the literature in neuroscience, acceleration, de-tracking, assessments, and more.” He gets so worked up that he calls a version of chapters 6 and 7 (which respectively cover kindergarten through fifth grade and sixth through eighth grades) an “embarrassment to professionalism.”

The jargon- and acronym-laden California framework, Mr. Conrad says, “promotes a cartoon view” of how students acquire “reliable mathematical skills.” It is equivalent, he says, to supporting that children need not “learn how to spell because there are spell-checkers and spelling is not part of analytical thinking.” The five-member writing team, supervised by a 20-member oversight team, didn’t collaborate with any recognized STEM experts in industry about what training graduates will need in the workplace, Mr. Conrad says.

“Those who claim to be champions of equity should put more effort and resources into helping all students to achieve real success in learning mathematics,” Mr. Conrad says, “rather than using illegal artificial barriers, misrepresented data and citations, or fake validations to create false optics of success.” California should stop trying to turn math into a social-science course.

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Considering California already underperforms compared to the nation - with an average that never approaches Proficient and barely skims over the top of Basic - the last thing it needs is more students who know more about identity politics and less about actual math.

"There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities… more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes."

By: Louisa Clarence-Smith

Published: Dec 29. 2022

Maths professors at top UK universities will warn ministers on Thursday that academics are too scared to challenge damaging attempts to “decolonise” the curriculum.

A dozen leading academics have written to Claire Coutinho, the Education Minister, calling for more protections for free speech at universities, where many professors fear it is too “personally risky” to challenge the decolonisation agenda.

For maths degrees, professors are being pressured to explain how they are presenting a “multicultural and decolonised view” of the subject. In a recent consultation, the Quality Assurance Agency, which advises universities on course standards, said maths professors need to “present the work of a diverse group” of mathematicians, and ensure students are aware if they had “connections to the slave trade, racism or Nazism.”

A group of professors will warn on Thursday that such guidance “risks politicising the subject of mathematics and presenting a skewed perspective on its history.”

'Personally risky'

They said in a joint letter, seen by The Telegraph, that it also “infringes on the academic freedom of mathematicians to teach their subject according to their best professional judgement”. However, they warned that academics “who challenge orthodoxies on topics such as gender identification and diversity face physical intimidation from student activists”.  

“Many mathematicians see it as personally risky to suggest that 'decolonising the curriculum' might not be the best way to encourage more Black and minority ethnic people to take up mathematics,” they added.

Signatories of the letter include Prof Alan Sokal of University College London, Prof Abhishek Saha of Queen Mary University of London, Prof Jane Hutton, a medical statistician who works at the University of Warwick, and Dr Yuri Bazlov from the University of Manchester.

They are urging the Government to fight to pass the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill in its original form, despite opposition in the House of Lords. Clause 4 of the bill would give academics and students the power to sue universities if their freedom of speech rights are breached. The Government tabled amendments to the bill which would mean academics could only use those powers as a “last resort”, after first pursuing complaints through the procedures of the relevant university and the higher education regulator.

Personal cost of raising complaints 'far too high'

However, responding to the amendments, the mathematicians said: “We do not think this would give us the protection that we need. Universities have vast resources and power compared to individual academics. If academics are required to exhaust all internal processes…and then spend up to 12 months taking their complaint through the Office for Students before they can begin the lengthy process of going to the courts, we believe that the personal cost of raising any complaints would be far too high, rendering the system ineffective.” Ms Coutinho has previously said that the Government remains “resolute in our commitment that academics and speakers will have the right to go to court where this fundamental right has been denied.”

A spokesperson for Universities UK said: “Universities work hard to create the right conditions to protect and promote free speech and academic freedom across their campuses, and there are already significant legal duties placed on universities to uphold freedom of speech. The Government’s proposed changes to the Freedom of Speech Bill are helpful in making the new legal tort more targeted in scope, reducing the risk of university resources being wasted defending frivolous or vexatious claims.”

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Just in case you were wondering, this is textbook Critical Race Theory.

“Another aspect of the construction of whiteness is the way certain groups have moved into or out of that race. For example, early in our history Irish, Jews, and Italians were considered nonwhite—that is, on a par with African Americans. Over time, they earned the prerogatives and social standing of whites by a process that included joining labor unions, swearing fealty to the Democratic Party, and acquiring wealth, sometimes by illegal or underground means. Whiteness, it turns out, is not only valuable; it is shifting and malleable.”

-- ”Critical Race Theory (Third Edition)”, Delgado, Richard; Stefancic, Jean; Harris, Angela

Robin DiAngelo, in her usual unvarnished manner, tells us that Jews can experience antisemitism, but are white and therefore have white privilege and membership in the oppressor class.

“Yet while many Ashkenazic Jewish people may not feel fully white, if they are of European heritage they are perceived as white by the culture at large, and thus granted white privilege. In many ways the process of assimilation into whiteness for European Jewish immigrants was the same as that of other European immigrants (Brodkin, 1998). Under the current racial construction, while Ashkenazic Jews expe­rience anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism is in part based on perceptions of ethnicity, their race is white. In other words, Ashkenazic Jews can experi­ence anti-Semitism and also benefit from white privilege.”

-- ”What Does It Mean to be White?”, Robin DiAngelo

By: Louisa Clarence-Smith

Published: Dec 29. 2022

Maths professors at top UK universities will warn ministers on Thursday that academics are too scared to challenge damaging attempts to “decolonise” the curriculum.

A dozen leading academics have written to Claire Coutinho, the Education Minister, calling for more protections for free speech at universities, where many professors fear it is too “personally risky” to challenge the decolonisation agenda.

For maths degrees, professors are being pressured to explain how they are presenting a “multicultural and decolonised view” of the subject. In a recent consultation, the Quality Assurance Agency, which advises universities on course standards, said maths professors need to “present the work of a diverse group” of mathematicians, and ensure students are aware if they had “connections to the slave trade, racism or Nazism.”

A group of professors will warn on Thursday that such guidance “risks politicising the subject of mathematics and presenting a skewed perspective on its history.”

'Personally risky'

They said in a joint letter, seen by The Telegraph, that it also “infringes on the academic freedom of mathematicians to teach their subject according to their best professional judgement”. However, they warned that academics “who challenge orthodoxies on topics such as gender identification and diversity face physical intimidation from student activists”.  

“Many mathematicians see it as personally risky to suggest that 'decolonising the curriculum' might not be the best way to encourage more Black and minority ethnic people to take up mathematics,” they added.

Signatories of the letter include Prof Alan Sokal of University College London, Prof Abhishek Saha of Queen Mary University of London, Prof Jane Hutton, a medical statistician who works at the University of Warwick, and Dr Yuri Bazlov from the University of Manchester.

They are urging the Government to fight to pass the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill in its original form, despite opposition in the House of Lords. Clause 4 of the bill would give academics and students the power to sue universities if their freedom of speech rights are breached. The Government tabled amendments to the bill which would mean academics could only use those powers as a “last resort”, after first pursuing complaints through the procedures of the relevant university and the higher education regulator.

Personal cost of raising complaints 'far too high'

However, responding to the amendments, the mathematicians said: “We do not think this would give us the protection that we need. Universities have vast resources and power compared to individual academics. If academics are required to exhaust all internal processes…and then spend up to 12 months taking their complaint through the Office for Students before they can begin the lengthy process of going to the courts, we believe that the personal cost of raising any complaints would be far too high, rendering the system ineffective.” Ms Coutinho has previously said that the Government remains “resolute in our commitment that academics and speakers will have the right to go to court where this fundamental right has been denied.”

A spokesperson for Universities UK said: “Universities work hard to create the right conditions to protect and promote free speech and academic freedom across their campuses, and there are already significant legal duties placed on universities to uphold freedom of speech. The Government’s proposed changes to the Freedom of Speech Bill are helpful in making the new legal tort more targeted in scope, reducing the risk of university resources being wasted defending frivolous or vexatious claims.”

[ Via: https://archive.ph/wl4oD ]

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“You don’t evaluate mathematics by the standards of poetry, or poetry by the standards of mathematics.“