Current Events > Is math racist? As students of color struggle schools are altering instruction

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https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1468302154452586497

https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1468302760999366662

https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/1468303247316246532



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Can't read the article without a sub
useless

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Paywalled article, copy paste that shit for us peons tc

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AAVE can cause a huge amount of trouble with regard to word problems. So I do see how making certain changes for the sake of accessibility is important. Remember, accessibility is never wrong.

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I'm sure there's an actual conversation to be had about this sort of thing, but reducing it to "hurr hurr is math racist" essentially kills that conversation before it begins

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Gwynevere posted...

Paywalled article, copy paste that shit for us peons tc

The twitter thread gives a summary of what the article is about.

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They should start playing dice in class like in The Wire

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"Kids should never have to change who they are to assimilate into classroom culture. I should change my instruction to fit their needs"

Man these poor kids are in for a rude awakening when they one day go to get a job.
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eston posted...

I'm sure there's an actual conversation to be had about this sort of thing, but reducing it to "hurr hurr is math racist" essentially kills that conversation before it begins

That's what TC is known for

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Are there any specifics in there as to what exactly theyre proposing theyd be doing differently and why the current routines are specifically unproductive? Feels like some kind of feel good nonsense meant to ignore the fact that its probably shitty underfunded schools that are the main issue.

voldothegr8 posted...

"Kids should never have to change who they are to assimilate into classroom culture. I should change my instruction to fit their needs"

Man these poor kids are in for a rude awakening when they one day go to get a job.

People of color have to do it all the time, but that just shows the system is built without them in mind.

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It's a good thing. Let them trash the education. Kids need to learn the hard way how garbage it is

Could someone give an example of how math can be racist?

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eston posted...

I'm sure there's an actual conversation to be had about this sort of thing, but reducing it to "hurr hurr is math racist" essentially kills that conversation before it begins

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Nemu posted...

Are there any specifics in there as to what exactly theyre proposing theyd be doing differently and why the current routines are specifically unproductive? Feels like some kind of feel good nonsense meant to ignore the fact that its probably shitty underfunded schools that are the main issue.

Underfunded schools
Less quality teachers in lower income areas
Crime, poverty, and lack of family structure (the biggest reasons

Nothing at all to do with race other than some races being more effected by those circumstances

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Not being good at math is racist

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can't read the article
do they give examples of how they're changing things?

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Math isn't racist.
But historically people struggle with math over other subjects. Something about it makes it hard for people to pick up for some reason.
Add that disproportionately POC are in poor neighborhoods and bad schools it makes them disproportionately bad at math

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Ivynn posted...
Could someone give an example of how math can be racist?

Math is dominated by white men, curricula for math is designed with white men and boys in mind, society has created stereotypes that women in particular are bad at math, that minorities aren't smart, etc. etc.
I'm reading The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, and I'm sure just about everything she has to say about physics applies to math: it's a boy's club, the upper echelons especially are run by men and for men(and primarily white men, at that), and she's heard multiple administrators fret that increasing diversity means a decrease in overall merit because the secret is that they believe a true meritocracy would naturally create a community that's 90+% white dudes lol.

If you would like a TL;DR, math is taught in a profoundly racist and sexist society and it is warped by that, from how it is taught, to whom certain theorems are named after.

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eston posted...

I'm sure there's an actual conversation to be had about this sort of thing, but reducing it to "hurr hurr is math racist" essentially kills that conversation before it begins

This is what TC wants

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I'm just gonna leave this here:
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234

EndOfDiscOne posted...

They should start playing dice in class like in The Wire

tl;dr of the article is pretty much that.
It's all explained in the first couple or three paragraphs, then goes on and on and on about mostly nothing past that.

Students practice equations through singing, dancing and drawing. Activities are sculpted around their hobbies and interests: anime, gaming, Minecraft. Problem-solving is a team sport, rather than an individual sprint to the right answer.

Ebri, a math teacher and tech specialist for Duval County Schools in Florida, is using new techniques designed to promote equity. If kids of color, girls and low-income students engage, they'll be more likely to pursue high-level math classes, the argument goes. That can open doors to competitive colleges and lucrative careers.

The takeway is that "stern proctor" type teaching, where it's all vomiting out material and expecting students to vomit it back, is a bad mismatch to how kids actually learn stuff. Especially so for kids who have more important things to worry about than memorizing a bunch of numbers.

Math ISN'T racist!

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gunplagirl posted...

AAVE can cause a huge amount of trouble with regard to word problems. So I do see how making certain changes for the sake of accessibility is important. Remember, accessibility is never wrong.

Obviously I can't speak for everyone but I have never, ever come across a single Black person that couldn't understand non-AAVE English because they spoke AAVE. If anything, the presumption that AAVE should be incorporated into schools is a little ignorant in itself; almost as if Black people can't grasp English and need to be taught in AAVE instead.

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If they want to help black kids with math then they should address the reason people often have trouble with it: teachers often don't teach the underlying concepts, they just teach you to memorize what to do when the symbols are in a particular position.

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ElatedVenusaur posted...

Math is dominated by white men, curricula for math is designed with white men and boys in mind, society has created stereotypes that women in particular are bad at math, that minorities aren't smart, etc. etc.
I'm reading The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, and I'm sure just about everything she has to say about physics applies to math: it's a boy's club, the upper echelons especially are run by men and for men(and primarily white men, at that), and she's heard multiple administrators fret that increasing diversity means a decrease in overall merit because the secret is that they believe a true meritocracy would naturally create a community that's 90+% white dudes lol.

If you would like a TL;DR, math is taught in a profoundly racist and sexist society and it is warped by that, from how it is taught, to whom certain theorems are named after.

Pls be troll.

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"Joe Bob was going to a Trump rally but his Mercedez could only fit 4 people. On the way they encountered 5 BLM protestors. How many people did you count?"

I only counted the people in the Mercedes and the BLM protestors. But obviously that was the right thing to do, because Joe Bob couldn't go to the rally with his friends unless he was one of the four people in the car. (that's nine people by the way)

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Math is not racist in any way, shape, or form.

Now, classic American literature, on the other hand...

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How math is taught:


How math is actually learned:


There's nothing really "race" about it at all.

voldothegr8 posted...

"Kids should never have to change who they are to assimilate into classroom culture. I should change my instruction to fit their needs"

Man these poor kids are in for a rude awakening when they one day go to get a job.

Thats evidence of the issue itself. How often are Afros and dreads and such banned at work for being unprofessional? Or Black/African styles of dress for the same reasons?

its the literal example of If it aint white it aint right

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Questionmarktarius posted...

Students practice equations through singing, dancing and drawing.

This sounds ridiculous to me but I remember in like 3rd grade we had a "song" for basic math multiplication, 8x8 and whatnot. Of course, that was just making memorization more "fun" but it was overall a small part of the entire process...I think.

If people in charge of teaching think their changes will legitimately make it better for their kids then I don't really have much I can say tbh.

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math is not racist

but

measuring someone's intelligence/worth/value based on math, when the system that teaches math consistently fails people of color, those who live in poverty, etc. can be, yes.

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Im not gonna read the article or argue with people about what is racist or not.

if children are struggling at a higher rate (even if it happens to primarily affect one race of student), its the schools responsibility to help them and possibly change curriculum to help those students. Thats the entire point. The fact that that sort of consideration is met with push back and debate is absolutely absurd.

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Key posted...

But historically people struggle with math over other subjects. Something about it makes it hard for people to pick up for some reason.

Base-10 is completely invented. That's why.

"Natural" math is weird to someone drilled on place-value and long division and stuff. Indigenous people who haven't been exposed to arabic numerals consistently have high-competency with mathematics based on estimates, relationships, and ratios.
https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/e_access/serial/m0005975_v_a.pdf

You've got to unwind how the brain is put together for analyzing "quantity", then rebuild it around numerals and powers of ten.
The Romans were closer to how we actually think about numbers, before being taught how to.

No, just like everything else, some people have an easier time with it, some people struggle with it. Not everything has to be about race. It just hasvto do with individuals strengths and weaknesses.

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VipaGTS posted...

Im not gonna read the article or argue with people about what is racist or not.

if children are struggling at a higher rate (even if it happens to primarily affect one race of student), its the schools responsibility to help them and possibly change curriculum to help those students. Thats the entire point. The fact that that sort of consideration is met with push back and debate is absolutely absurd.

The question would be if the entire curriculum needs to change or if we just need to better fund schools and pay teachers what they actually deserve so that kids get the education they need and teachers can have the resources to give more one on one time with both students that are excelling and students that are falling behind. I have a hard time imagining how a particular curriculum in itself is the problem when it's probably more that these kids are not getting the attention needed to help them understand on the same level as better funded schools.

I don't understand the hard push for wanting to churn out more students for STEM careers either. Not everyone wants to go into it. Some people might wanna be chefs, or artists or something completely unrelated to high science and medical advancement.

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Notice even the tweets dont phrase the question like TC did.
The tweets headline says is math education racist, not is math racist.
The implication isnt that the subject of math is racist, its that the way in which math education is taught may be inadvertently putting PoC students at a disadvantage for a variety of reasons.

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IndustrialTrudg posted...

Pls be troll.

Why? Need a friend?

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I think many make the incorrect assumption that kids get enough time to learn in school. As a parent you still have to sit with them and go over topics they struggle with (like math). My younger one struggles with math but we spend an hour with her almost every day getting extra practice.
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gunplagirl posted...

AAVE can cause a huge amount of trouble with regard to word problems. So I do see how making certain changes for the sake of accessibility is important. Remember, accessibility is never wrong.

Well no, that's entirely a function of how you define accessibility. Giving different math scores based on race or gender or anything rather than the factual truth of the responses could be argued to be accessibility and is definitely wrong.

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Lil_Bit83 posted...

I don't understand the hard push for wanting to churn out more students for STEM careers either.

A lot of that is backed by big tech companies who would like to have cheaper labor.

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Nemu posted...
The question would be if the entire curriculum needs to change or if we just need to better fund schools and pay teachers what they actually deserve so that kids get the education they need and teachers can have the resources to give more one on one time with both students that are excelling and students that are falling behind. I have a hard time imagining how a particular curriculum in itself is the problem when it's probably more that these kids are not getting the attention needed to help them understand on the same level as better funded schools.

I mean, it goes even deeper than that. If there's one kid whose well-fed and another who is lucky to eat two insufficient meals per day, then in most instances, the kid whose eating well is going to do better. If one kid's parents are able to put time and effort into helping them, and another kid's parent works 60+ hours a week just trying to make ends meet, then the kid whose parents can afford to be active in their development (or can afford to hire some one to do that for them) is probably going to do better.

And, of course, those kids who don't get enough food or who don't see their parents much are statistically more likely to be Black, Hispanic, and/or Indigenous. Like, Math, as a discipline, doesn't create that, but it exists in this society and our math exists in this context.

It's also that so much of our primary schooling in the states is built around the gazillion standardized tests that get administered, because education policy sees that as the only way to make "objective" judgements as to who is doing well and who isn't (and all too often punishes schools for having poor scores, even when, sociologically speaking, a school in a impoverished urban or rural area is basically destined to test poorly for reasons outside of any individual teacher's or school's control).

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Questionmarktarius posted...

I'm just gonna leave this here:
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234

Much obliged @Questionmarktarius .

I'll preface this post by fallaciously appealing to authority by mentioning I have a B.S. in both Physics and Applied Mathematics. One thing I'm sure everyone from an engineering or Math background can agree on is that we teach mathematics improperly in school. The most glaring and obvious issue is that we teach the tools before we teach the problems. This is akin to teaching the properties of a hammer LONG before learning that the hammer was invented as a solution to drive nails into material to hold something in.

Additionally, we teach algorithms instead of relationships of numbers. It's 100x faster to multiply a number by 5 by treating 5 as "10/2"; in other words, take a number, add a 0, and half it. Example: 5*34 -> 340/2 -> 170. A couple critical tricks in upper level math/physics courses are "multiplying by 1" (Ex:multiplying some expression by (4-x)/(4-x)) and adding 0 (Ex: adding to some expression or subset in an expression (x-x) to rearrange and simplify things further) are essential for survival in those courses but you don't learn those explicitly, you pick them up over time over the course of the paradigm to the point where it becomes second nature.

This is what Common Core Math intended to achieve; to teach these kinds of tricks in grade school to accelerate kids' general understanding.

Now, pertaining to the article, the teachers interviewed are challenging the same problems outlined above but from the lens of it being a racial problem. I'd argue they're conflating a number of issues together. For instance, if you look at Scandinavian countries that are fairly equal in terms of gender freedom, STEM is still dominated by men. Women generally prefer humanities. Additionally, in the US, the Indian population is a tiny minority (probably 7%? across the entire US population) yet they're hugely overrepresented in the engineering world. The reason being, as my Indian buddy put it, is that they put a proverbially gun to your head at a young age and tell you to choose: "Investment Banker, Engineer, Scientist, Medicine; CHOOSE ONE". Black culture generally doesn't have this ubiquitous pressure to succeed academically which puts us at a disadvantage among other issues of low income, and not so strong family household structures to say the least.

Continuing on, the interviewed teachers' solutions to improve kids' mathematical abilities by connecting math to real world problems and using rap and other easy to remember methods warms my heart. One of my favorite Math professors of all time taught using really simplistic and somewhat childish words but they stuck and reinforced the lesson 1000x fold. First instance, when taking the limit of (1/x) from 0 to infinity, he would describe the denominator as becoming "hugey-wugey" or its proper term "arbitrarily large" and since you're dividing it by 1, one small piece of a hugey-wugey number becomes "teensy-weensy" or arbitrarily small, where the limit approaches 0 as an end result. Connecting with kids' interest is the best way to learn as it maintains their interest and drives their motivation to learn.

The only concern I have is when you inject politics into the equations. One of the teachers talks about being careful about using facts about the black incarceration problem and other "injustices" to which critics of this style are against. I'm in agreement with the critics of Critical Race Theory on the basis of the worry that you might send a message of "us versus them" and reinforce the racial divide in this country. Occupy Wall Street was pretty much halted in favor of BLM and I'd argue OWS is more important because this generation and the next is the least likely to be able to afford their own house. Someone with a lighter skin color than me having better opportunities is negated if neither of us are afforded the opportunity to own our own home. Given that there will be people that disagree with my views, I'd argue it's better to abide to the golden rule to keeping politics out of the workplace, or in this case, the classroom. Keep everything as neutral as possible.

Otherwise the teachers are doing the lords' work. A very wholesome article.

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Lil_Bit83 posted...

I don't understand the hard push for wanting to churn out more students for STEM careers either. Not everyone wants to go into it. Some people might wanna be chefs, or artists or something completely unrelated to high science and medical advancement.

I'm not in STEM, but we need them to save the planet and mitigate future climate catastrophes

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