I caught this going around the internet. It is the K-12 Math Ethnic Studies Framework for the Seattle Public School System.
This is the most egregious assault on mathematics I have ever seen.
Seattle Public Schools have no interest in teaching kids how to do math. They want the kids to understand how math is an oppressive system of power.
So does this mean that Euclidean geometry is in or out?
Euclidean geometry is out, so is calculus and statistics.
The entire world uses “Western” mathematics. Math, as we know it today, came out of Europe during the Renaissance. It is true that many ancient civilizations developed complex math. However, it was the development of the scientific method through the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment that formalized math.
Math was a tool used to explain what was being observed by the natural sciences. Isaac Newton had to develop calculus to explain the physics he was studying.
The Chinese and ancient Mesoamerican cultures created complex math, but it was often used for things such as astrology and predicting the zodiac.
Since the scientific revolution occurred in Europe, it was Europe that formalized mathematics in the scientific process we use today.
Creating a prejudice against Western mathematics and delegitimizing it because of its origins doesn’t make students competent in math. It gives them a built-in excuse to hate it and do poorly in it, hindering them for life.
These are some of the “learning targets” of the program:
Sure, all these kids will know just how math is racist and oppressive and used to “disenfranchize people of color,” but not one of them will know how to do any actual math.
The politics of self-identification play a role in this too.
I thought a mathematician was someone who could do math and actually solve math problems. Under this system, you just have to identify as a mathematician. Being unable to do math notwithstanding.
Being right means getting the mathematically correct answer. Being wrong means a bridge collapses, a plane falls out of the sky, a dosage is off and people die.
This is evil. This teaches kids to fear and hate math. This makes math the enemy and people who are skilled in math oppressors.
Nowhere in any of the skills this framework puts forward is math actually taught. This isn’t about increasing math proficiency, this is about destroying math and making it a hated subject. This framework increases mathematic ignorance.
And it has to.
Math explains why spending $200 Million in taxpayer dollars to remove urinals from municipal bathrooms to virtue signals to the trans and gender-neutral community, which makes up about 0.4% of the population is a stupid idea.
But if you learned Seattle’s ethnic math than you would know how making such a claim is bigoted systematic oppression.
This is the targeted destruction of math and the minds of children so that they are unable to question or challenge the most ridiculous machinations of the radical Left.
This needs to be destroyed with fire. Both the program itself and the bureaucrats and educators who came up with it.
This is a crime against humanity and God willing, one day, we will deal with the people who have done this to America’s educational system the way we dealt with the Nazis at Nuremberg.
Yes, if you teach my son that math is racial oppression instead of teaching him how to do math, you should swing by the neck until dead and be buried in shame in an unmarked grave.
Thinking about this for the last hour, I truly believe that every engineer with Boeing in Seattle should go to the school board with torches, pitchforks, and rifles and deal with.
1984 2.0 “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
WTF is “SWBAT”?
Student will be able to
Ah, thanks.
Didn’t the Arabs develop algebra?
Also this reminds me of that episode of Tom go to the mayor when they build I think it was a bridge exclusively using a novelty calculator that Tom was selling.
Also also, I think there is value to a history and philosophy of mathematics course but that might be a little abstract for young kids. This however is a running leap off a cliff while attached to a hang glider past that.
Somewhere I have a 4-volume series about the history of math (published by Microsoft???). I remember the first chapter in it describes the work of an ancient Egyptian.
Yes, algebra is an Arabic word, so one might guess it’s an Arabic creation. Worth checking on the details; they are not always what you might thing. For example, the numbers we call “Arabic” (the decimal system in general use) by Arabs is called “Hindu numbers”, which indicates their actual origin.
Matt, this isn’t a leap with a hang glider, it’s a leap with a paper napkin. It seems pretty clear the intent of the criminals who perpetrated this madness is to destroy all knowledge of math among students, and render them functionally innumerate. That goes with their earlier efforts to render them illiterate, I suppose, and ties into the well known fact that ignorant people are easier to control.
One wonder why Microsoft isn’t hollering about this. If this stuff becomes real, they will be unable to hire any Seattle residents.
Ok, found it. “The world of Mathematics”, 4 volumes, edited by James R. Newman; Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, 1988.
Volume 1 has a nice overview (by Philip Jourdain). It begins with Ahmose the Scribe of ancient Egypt, describing how his work is in fact algebra. Then on to the Greeks who did mostly geometry (though not entirely, consider Diophantus). About the Arabs he says that “the science of algebra was brought among the Arabs by Mohammed ben Musa, better known as Alkarismi, in a work written around 830 A.D., and was certainly derived by him from the Hindoos.”