But What About The Math?

Is there a reason why educators in Oregon believe that black students are incapable of learning math? They believe so and have put together this document, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction, to explain it. If this was about math teachers being racist, a horrible if odd notion as if math teachers would discriminate more or differently than any other teacher, that would be one thing.

But that’s not what it’s about. Columbia prof john McWhorter explains.

The idea is to show us how our racial reckoning of late ought change how we expose black kids to math. I suppose the counsel is also intended for kids of other types of melanin, but this is in essence a document that could be called “Math For Black Kids.”

The latest is that state-level policy makers in Oregon are especially intrigued by this document. There is all reason to suppose that its influence will spread more widely.

And this is to resisted, as this lovely pamphlet is teaching us that it is racist to expect black kids to master the precision of math.

That’s not how the teachers explain it, of course. They use a language of their own.

The framework for deconstructing racism in mathematics offers essential characteristics of antiracist math educators and critical approaches to dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by visualizing the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture.

A mouthful, perhaps, but it’s not all calorie-free word salad. They include teaching black students about black mathematicians (“reclaiming their mathematical ancestry”) and there’s the Yoruba approach using Base 20, which is great if you spend time in Western Africa. But what about the math?

Yes, the document pays lip service otherwise, claiming at one point to seek to         “teach rich, thoughtful, complex mathematics.” And rather often, the word praxis is used. But the thrust of this pamphlet is that:

1. a focus on getting the “right” answer is “perfectionism” or “either/or thinking;”

2. the idea that teachers are teachers and students are learners is wrong;

3. to think of it as a problem that the expectations you have of students are not met is racist;

4. to teach math in a linear fashion with skills taught in sequence is racist;

5. to value “procedural fluency” – i.e. knowing how to do the fractions, long division … — over “conceptual knowledge” is racist. That is, black kids are brilliant to know what math is trying to do, to know “what it’s all about,” rather than to actually do the math, just as many of us read about what physics or astrophysics accomplishes without ever intending to master the math that led to the conclusions;

6. to require students to “show their work” is racist;

7. requiring students to raise their hand before speaking “can reinforce paternalism and powerhoarding, in addition to breaking the process of thinking, learning, and communicating.”

Some might immediately decry this as the soft bigotry of low expectations, as if it’s just too hard to black kids to do math, so let’s call it racist, dumb it down and produce students who ace math but can’t add. Will it be good enough to get them into Harvard via its holistic admissions that their math grades were superlative even if they couldn’t tell a fraction if it bit them in the butt? Who needs math anyway?

As McWhorter notes, it’s unlikely that math teachers, even the most woke of Oregonians, are likely to not squeeze a little math instruction into their classroom, with apologies for perpetuating the white supremacy of correct answers. So then, what’s the big deal of these inane screeds?

As in, first it is racism propounded as antiracism. Black kids shouldn’t expected to master the precision of math and should be celebrated for talking around it, gamely approximating its answers and saying why it can be dangerous? This is bigotry right out of Reconstruction, Tulsa, Selma, and Charlottesville.

Second, it is not science but scripture. It claims to be about teaching math while founded on shielding students from the requirement to actually do it. This is unempirical. It does so with an implication that only a moral transgressor numb to some larger point would question the contradiction. This is, as such, a religious document, telling you to accept that Jesus walked on water.

In his first point, McWhorter is fighting for the future of black students. By reducing the expectations of mastering a basic subject matter, you end up with math-incapable students. Black kids can do math. Black kids can learn math. Unless you don’t teach them math, in which case some will not, Can black kids succeed without the basic skills necessary to survive? Well, we can change what constitutes necessary skills, but does anybody want to drive over a bridge designed by someone who can’t do math?

The second point is directed to those for whom tossing the word salad of racism and white supremacy is a substitute for rational thought. Religion isn’t about believing in a deity, per se, as much as blind faith in irrational beliefs. No doubt the people who crafted this document believed they were being antiracist by being racist, by substituting ideological gibberish for rational thought.

The “debate” over whether 2+2=4 was taken very seriously by deeply passionate people who argued the point within an inch of its life.

This doesn’t work. This can’t work. Society can’t function if we each get to assign our own values to numbers so that whatever outcome we reach is right for us.

You can love equality, even equity if you must, all you want, but if you want to help black students to achieve success, stop treating them like incapable idiots for whom stuff like math is just too hard, too white, to expect them to master it. Teach them math. They can do it. And keep your religion to yourself.