MATH IS RACISM? SO FOLLOWS FROM NEW COURSE AT SEATTLE SCHOOLS
Two plus two can equal four, but if the students say five, you better not correct them, you oppressor! Mathematics in Seattle will turn into social justice education. But that is not all. The US government will be positioned as a racist institution and must be destroyed. If this is taught to students, it is certainly a destructive teaching.
The Advisory Committee for Ethnic Studies (ACEC) under the head of the Seattle Public Schools Department has released a preliminary Ethnic Studies Mathematics Core Document in which district officials denounce math as a racist science used to oppress students - and if you correct a student's faulty math logic, you are guilty.
Math is racism
The committee, created by the state's school districts, covers 4 topics, including Power and Oppression and the History of Resistance and Liberation.
In fact, it appears that "Western" mathematics is seen as the only "legitimate expression" of mathematical identity and that it is being used to "disenfranchise people of color and their communities" and therefore "obliterates the historical contributions of people of color and their communities."
None of this has anything to do with the kind of math you should study in high school; these topics appear to have remained for an advanced course at Evergreen State College.
Promotional video:
The committee asks the question, "Where do Power and Oppression appear in our mathematical experience?" This means: "Who decides if the answer is correct?"
Apparently, mathematics is subjective today. Who are you to say that two plus two equals four? This leads to the question, “Who is smart? Who is not smart? Answer: the person who says that two plus two equals five is not yet smart, and he needs to be corrected, even if you think that this is oppressing him.
Committee members believe that mathematics is being manipulated to allow inequality and oppression to persist. They ask the question, "Who is oppressing?" I think the implied answer is a white, cisgender, heterosexual Christian male.
They ask, "How has mathematics been used to resist and free people of color and communities from oppression?"
Ironically, if you join this social justice worldview in mathematics and instill in someone that there are no right answers, you will be causing immeasurable harm and, yes, oppressive students.
History is being rewritten
These radical educators not only seek to remake the study of mathematics. They seem willing to use history teaching to introduce a radically progressive worldview, using the doctrines of the socialist Howard Zinn to indoctrinate children.
The Committee for Ethnic History Studies of the United States states that "the United States government was founded on racist intellectual premises and economic practices that legitimized the suppression of people of color that continues to this day."
The document does not hide the intention of its authors to demonize capitalism as exploitative and oppressive. They represent mass incarceration as "the new Jim Crow laws" and want students to understand that "Europeans have brought dominant worldview values -" firearms, the Bible, private property and social hierarchy, and racial superiority."
Reasonable people, of course, can argue that history is varnished, and we will all benefit from a more holistic approach to how modern society was shaped. But this list of possible recommendations goes far beyond this scope. This will be the suggestion of an ideological point of view, not the teaching of history.
Seattle Public Schools Response
The ACEC is composed of several faculty members, and was created under the mandate of the legislature to "advise, facilitate and make recommendations to the office of the head of the state's department of education regarding the definition of ethnic research material."
The committee will meet over the next year in order to submit its final recommendations to a higher authority by September 1. The State's Office of the Head of the Department of Education notes that the document is an overview of the work done by counties to date, but not necessarily a definitive list of recommendations that has not yet been presented.
“The committee felt it was important to review the work that had already been done,” says Keith Payne, director of the communications committee from the office of the head of education. "The materials posted on our committee's website were created by our state's school districts, and the committee intends to review them as work progresses."
Posted by Jason Rantz. Translator: nessie264
