Professor Says - Math is 'Racist'

[SamAdams]

Well there's 'liberal' in the original Thomas Jefferson liberation of thinking and of man sense. 'libertarian' is probably the closest we come to this today.
'Liberal' today leans more toward socialist, and 'progressive' leans toward hardcore Marxist.

The language has been co-opted. Discrimination is important IMO. Those who cannot discriminate between what is true & beneficial versus the false & harmful will be battered by language used against them. Such a society is wide open to the most idiotic b.s.


A foundation of Western thought going back to at least the ancient Greeks is that discernment & discrimination is not only possible, but absolutely necessary for seeking and creating 'the good life'.

Value relativism & nihilism - the notion that 'It's all good. Nothing is better than anything else. And it doesn't matter anyway.' is a fairly recent Western malady.


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[blues]

A foundation of Western thought going back to at least the ancient Greeks is that discernment & discrimination is not only possible, but absolutely necessary for seeking and creating 'the good life'.

Value relativism & nihilism - the notion that 'It's all good. Nothing is better than anything else. And it doesn't matter anyway.' is a fairly recent Western malady.

The Greeks were on to relativism and nihilism as well. They weren't one dimensional. Oh those wacky Pre-Socratics...

"Fairly recent" being a pretty relative term.

I agree about language being co-opted. I say we make an effort to take it back to make language "great again".

[SamAdams]

The nihilism big gun was Nietzsche...fairly late in the Western Civilization game


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[blues]

The nihilism big gun was Nietzsche...fairly late in the Western Civilization game


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I'm well acquainted with Mr. Nietzsche. I am speaking of the concept and not the person most associated with the genre. Kierkegaard was not the first to peer into the abyss.

You must be a racist Greekophobe.

[Joe in PNG]

I think most of us would agree that there is no gain without some sort of struggle.
However, there is a human instinct to protect others, and this is good. It's hard to watch someone struggle.
But like a lot of good things, if taken to the extreme, it becomes a malignant thing. A hyper overprotective parents, for instance, can be just as bad on a child's development as a neglectful one.

Racism is a bad thing, and the old Jim Crow era educational philosophy of "tuck them away somewhere and give them the leftovers" was 100% wrong.
But, in reaction to that, we've gone too far in the other direction, almost full circle. After all, what's the difference between a "Blacks Only" room or a "Safe Space"?
The old time racist would say that non whites were too stupid and lazy to learn the same things as the white kids. The modern educational theorist is basically saying much the same thing, just in more kind language. Which is foolishness. Asian kids aren't so shocked by colonialist language in mathematics that they can't learn it. White kids aren't triggered by concepts that originated in the Islamic world.

This sort of thinking leads to effects that are pretty much indistinguishable from the malicious, as Mjolinr pointed out.

[Jeep]

I think most of us would agree that there is no gain without some sort of struggle.
However, there is a human instinct to protect others, and this is good. It's hard to watch someone struggle.
But like a lot of good things, if taken to the extreme, it becomes a malignant thing. A hyper overprotective parents, for instance, can be just as bad on a child's development as a neglectful one.

Racism is a bad thing, and the old Jim Crow era educational philosophy of "tuck them away somewhere and give them the leftovers" was 100% wrong.
But, in reaction to that, we've gone too far in the other direction, almost full circle. After all, what's the difference between a "Blacks Only" room or a "Safe Space"?
The old time racist would say that non whites were too stupid and lazy to learn the same things as the white kids. The modern educational theorist is basically saying much the same thing, just in more kind language. Which is foolishness. Asian kids aren't so shocked by colonialist language in mathematics that they can't learn it. White kids aren't triggered by concepts that originated in the Islamic world.

This sort of thinking leads to effects that are pretty much indistinguishable from the malicious, as Mjolinr pointed out.

Good points. And the truth is that in most of our government-run schools these days, few of the kids know that "pi" is a Greek letter or that Newton invented calculus. In fact, my guess is that a solid majority of students don't know where Greece is or who inhabits its. In other words, most kids don't know anything about the history of math or associate it with "western" culture (which more than a few of them probably associate with cowboys if they associate it with anything). And in many and perhaps most US schools these days, math isn't seen as "white" it is seen as "Asian."

The whole thing in nuts, which is not surprising coming from someone who has a doctorate in "education." It is a classical example of social-justice race baiting that demonstrates a profound ignorance about what is really going on in the schools these days--which is a constant slow dumbing down for all students, white, black, Asian, whatever. And theories like this just excuse making things worse.

[AtomicToaster]

"She concludes her argument with the claim that all knowledge is “relational,” or is, in other words, relative. “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”"

There you go. She is telling everyone that she cannot be reasoned with and no further conversation with or about her is necessary.

[blues]

"She concludes her argument with the claim that all knowledge is “relational,” or is, in other words, relative. “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”"

There you go. She is telling everyone that she cannot be reasoned with and no further conversation with or about her is necessary.

She must be a follower of Hume...as opposed to Kant. (Actually, I doubt she's familiar with either.)

[Jared]

Good points. And the truth is that in most of our government-run schools these days, few of the kids know that "pi" is a Greek letter or that Newton invented calculus. In fact, my guess is that a solid majority of students don't know where Greece is or who inhabits its. In other words, most kids don't know anything about the history of math or associate it with "western" culture (which more than a few of them probably associate with cowboys if they associate it with anything). And in many and perhaps most US schools these days, math isn't seen as "white" it is seen as "Asian."

The whole thing in nuts, which is not surprising coming from someone who has a doctorate in "education." It is a classical example of social-justice race baiting that demonstrates a profound ignorance about what is really going on in the schools these days--which is a constant slow dumbing down for all students, white, black, Asian, whatever. And theories like this just excuse making things worse.

True no BS story, when I was doing my first semester of calculus and physics, and I was told by my instructors of the contributions Newton had made to both, I was a little awed. I also told my physics instructor at one point that I blamed Newton for my current woes (it was a joke, the instructor had a hell of a sense of humor and we shared a lot of laughs).

[gtae07]

Education, whether it's primary/secondary school (I'd like to think at the university level all the teachers/professors are competent educators, but my rather limited experience doesn't support that) or pistol/carbine classes, is full of people that want to do it, while there aren't nearly as many people who can do it. As with most things, desire, while necessary, is insufficient for success or proficiency. There are many "educators", in many fields, that really aren't very good at it.

Many people, like the professor in the article from the OP I suspect, think that "math" is a pursuit in and of itself. It's not (at least not for the vast majority of people). Rather it's a tool that's necessary for certain (many) educational endeavors (I'd say "life", but that tends to piss people off).

I think that's the case with a lot of subjects, especially at the college level. That is, most of the struggles people have with understanding certain subjects (when they're genuinely trying, anyway, as opposed to goofing off and slacking) are due to the way the material is being taught. I firmly believe that the vast majority of people could learn the material and do the work for most fields up to a bachelor's degree level, provided they were taught properly and the emphasis was on being able to do the work rather than memorize things or make fancy derivations.

Take math, for example. Most people teaching college math are teaching it because they love math and are very good at it, and wound up with an academic job that requires them to teach on occasion*. So they often wind up teaching the class as if they were simply reviewing the material for those who already understood it. The students, however, don't already know the material. Many of them probably don't learn best from such deductive teaching methods. And for the vast majority of them, what they want/need to get from the class is a practical ability to apply the material. Unfortunately, too many classes focus more on providing rigorous, formally-correct derivation of the material than to practical applications. In my case, Calc III was supposed to teach us about double and triple integrals and how to apply them--which at least as I remember was actually pretty simple. Unfortunately, what we got tested on wasn't whether we could appropriately perform them, but rather whether we had memorized the integrals and identities of various obscure/uncommon trig functions, many of which we'd never even heard of.

My first system dynamics and controls professor launched into a tirade one day about how we shouldn't be in his class if we didn't find the material interesting and exciting and understandable. Never mind that it's a required class for pretty much any engineering major; apparently his field was the only one worth studying. I ended up failing and retaking it with a professor that not only cared about teaching, but did a decent job of it.

In the big picture, the problem is that education is steered by academics, for the purpose of making more academics. I think it's a big part of why shop and practical classes have disappeared from high schools in favor of more "college prep" classes. And I think it's a real big reason behind why my degree program was so theory-heavy--the people running the program had research labs and wanted more grad students, so they taught the classes in a way intended to prepare students for grad school and academic careers, rather than the industry jobs that most of us pursued instead. Even now, in my day job, we get kids fresh from school who can do impressive academic work but don't have a grasp of real-world engineering.


* It's been my experience that the majority (60-80% or so) of professors in STEM fields, especially at research institutions, teach because they're required to, not because they want to. It's bad enough having a teacher who likes the material and wants to teach, but isn't any good at it; one who isn't any good and doesn't give a flip because it interferes with his research is even worse.