I can’t watch the news. I can’t read Twitter…I can’t read newspapers….
Fear not, my eyesight is fine…the problem is this uncontrollable need to continually divide us by race. Every issue in the news is now handcuffed to race…because race is the magic ingredient that gets you noticed.
You might be asking yourself which racial division got me riled up this time. I will warn you in advance…you will probably laugh, then make that scrunched up questioning face and tilt your head to the side like a schnauzer when you ask if he wants a taco, and then you will sigh and perhaps cry a little when you realize that these words come from someone who is responsible for teaching those that would teach our children…
Don’t say I didn’t warn you:
Dr. Rochelle Gutierrez (yes, she has a Ph.D.), A University of Illinois professor (more on that later) claims, “the ability to solve geometry and algebra problems and teaching such subjects perpetuates so-called white privilege.”
I know we already had the math is racist talk, but that was about an erroneous deduction that corporate America was using math to discriminate…this is wholly different.
Please note that she did not claim the lessons used, or the methodology of teaching promote white privilege…but the actual ability to solve mid level mathematics problems *and* teaching our children how to solve them is causing white privilege to persist in this country.
One more quote from this professor should sum up her entire belief system for you, “…mathematics itself operates as whiteness”. Her…errrr….ummm…logic? Using terms such as Pythagorean and pi make kids think that mathematics was developed mostly by Greeks and other white Europeans. Forget that the abacus came from Babylon (modern day Iraq) or that the word Algebra itself is from Arabic origin.
The numerals we use (0-9) and the concept of zero were introduced by two Indian mathematicians. The foundation blocks of geometry came from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt…1300 years *before* Thales became the first widely known Greek mathematician. Yes, geometry did take a massive leap when Euclid defined the axiomatic method (definition, axiom, theorem, and proof) which we still use today.
That doesn’t make math white. You could even start your course by giving a history of mathematics through the years and be sure to recognize all the cultures that contributed something to the knowledge of math if you were worried that your students think math is “white”.
I was unaware that Algebra and Geometry only exist in America. Do they not teach these math courses in other predominately non-white countries? The estimates are that approximately 1.3 billion of the world’s population is made up of “white” people. 19% of the world…yet math is whiteness.
Should we not teach anything that has any “white” European influence?
Using this sort of logic means that we shouldn’t be teaching our children about automobiles (German), cinema (France), power transformers (Iceland), or telephones (Scotland)….because non-white children will be too upset to learn about anything that was invented by a white European.
All of these children that she worries would be so easily triggered certainly don’t mind using their cell phones (white American inventor Martin Cooper) or those earbuds (French). Dr. Dre may have made a lot of money with the Beats by Dre…but the earliest headphones were developed by a British company.
She asks if we should be equating intelligence to the ability to understand abstracts in mathematics and asks why they get larger grants than those that study English. Wait for it…did it hit you yet…the logic fault (well, one of them anyhow) in play here?
She sees math as inherently “white”, yet English, a language from England (white and European) isn’t? Let that soak in for a second….
She is a professor, but apparently her focus is teaching math majors who are minoring in education how to teach math. She also teaches something called “sociopolitical perspectives on mathematics”. I see…in other words she teaches that “Math is racist”.
She has published a few works and I thought it only fair to read them before I jumped to any conclusions…so what does she have to say?
This is her definition of math from her paper in 2002 – “Often considered a ‘universal language,’ composed of a static body of knowledge that was established long ago by the Greeks”. This as we already know from the first few paragraphs is inherently false. Her logic is based on a faulty argument. She is misleading readers with “antithetical characteristics” (lies) about the very subject upon which she is focused.
Math is no more static than the ocean…and was established by civilizations that were around long before Zeus and Hera were being fed grapes atop Mount Olympus. We learn new things every day, we have problems that have no solutions, we have defined numbers which even the most powerful computers still can’t calculate (Graham’s number, TREE(3), Rayo’s number)…we are far from static.
In a paper from 2008, she compares two groups of students…one is middle class white and the other group consists of black, Latina/o, First Nations, English language learners, and working class students. I see…the entire middle class is white and hey…where are the Asians? Why are they excluded from these groupings? Are there no middle class people of color? Really?
I believe that she leaves out Asians and middle class people of color because they skew the data away from her concept that math is “whiteness”. You have to love people who exclude sets of data that are contrary to their argument. Her entire concept is inherently flawed…
The results of a 2006 study show that by fifth grade, Hispanic and white students have roughly the same math and reading scores. By eighth grade, math scores for Hispanic students in North Carolina surpassed those of whites by roughly a tenth of a standard deviation. Asians outscored whites in math in every grade level that year.
Wait…math is whiteness, yet Asian and Hispanic students outperform white students? That doesn’t fit the model she is pushing. What does she want to come of this? She wants to promote her field of study. She wants people to buy her books and call on her for ways to help the under-performing minority students. She wants to turn your student’s math class into a cultural awareness class. She believes that the answer to all of America’s math problems is having our teachers become educated in her political “conocimiento” before teaching their students.
I am white (Norse mostly, but since my heritage doesn’t count anymore we’ll go with white) but I would be furious if someone claimed that my race is somehow inferior when it comes to mathematics. Where are all the SJW’s taking to social media to call this woman out?
Sadly, as it turns out, her ideas are catching on and we now have a plethora of studies looking into the issue with race and math. I just finished an article by a young non-white lady who absolutely loved math until pre-calculus…where she hit a wall and received a D minus. She then had a similar experience in AP calculus, where she finished with a D.
The only blame so far should be put on the counselor that allowed someone who received a D minus in pre-calculus to move on to AP calculus and the student who thought making that jump was a good idea. How bright is a person who figured that a D minus in pre-calc was good enough to make that leap into AP calculus. Who does that?
I looked it up and in the state where she went to high school, every district that listed the prerequisites to take AP calculus called for pre-calculus passed with a C (some say B) or better and/or teacher recommendation. Now I must question the veracity of the story as a whole.
Regardless, I think we could all name people of all races and genders who breezed through the algebra and geometry and got kicked in the junk by calculus (or other higher math). Somehow, this person loved algebra and geometry (even though these two subjects are whiteness, right?) but struggled mightily with calculus…and this struggle was only because of her race.
My searches led to a discovery of more studies that claim just by knowing about the supposed gap between races in mathematics, non-white children will under perform as they have lower expectations placed on them by society and themselves.
Dr. Gutierrez takes that one step further and tells all children of color that just doing math is white, so no wonder they aren’t any good at it. Really? Because using Greek terminology will make all kids think that all math was handed down by white people for white people only?
Tell that to these people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_inventors_and_scientists or the human computers from 1950’s NASA…or perhaps National Medal of Science recipient, Richard Tapia who is known for his phrase:
“Excellence comes in all flavors”
He says this to assert that neither race nor any other characterization determines talent or success. Hmmm…but Dr. Gutierrez says that math is whiteness. Which of them do you believe? The Ph.D. who is trying to divide us along racial lines once again in order to promote her field of study (sociopolitical perspectives on mathematics…maybe we should also have a field that studies the effects of fluctuating geomagnetism on athletic achievement) and make a few dollars…or the National Medal of Science recipient who is trying to push non-white children to strive for greater?
Apparently, you can get a doctorate for telling people of your own race that they can accept lesser…that they shouldn’t struggle or try to improve…that it is just whiteness being thrust upon them. If a white Ph.D. wrote a paper claiming, “Simply playing sports is blackness” there would be a protest outside his office before the ink dried. Why the hypocrisy here?
Math class is for math. This is where students learn 1+1=2 (except in binary for you pedants) and Cantor’s Diagonal Argument. If you want to have a math history course where you can cover each culture’s contributions to mathematics, go right ahead…but let’s leave math class for actual mathematics.
Our country has spent so much time worrying about common core and no child left behind and racial divides that we have effectively left all of our children behind. We squelch creativity and demand rote memorization. We leave no room for actual problem solving. Our demand for teaching to the lowest common denominator has led to the following:
On a standardized test used around the world (so no complaints about being geared towards white children):
2003 mean US scores – White – 512, Asian – 506, Hispanic – 443, Black – 417
2015 mean US scores – White – 499, Asian – 498, Hispanic – 446, Black – 419
So we didn’t work to improve those that received lower scores, we worked to drag back those that were performing well? Is this what we want? Let’s not push all children to be successful, let’s push all kids towards some middle ground?
What if we had that attitude towards athletics or arts? Imagine training for a marathon but only being coached at the level of the slowest kid in gym. Is that teaching? Is that preparing our children to be their best (not the best, their best…there is a difference).
Here is what it has done to our students on a global scale…that very same test when compared to the world:
2000 -US 15 year olds rank 24th for mathematical literacy
2006 -US 15 year olds rank 31st
2012 -US 15 year olds rank 36th
2015 -US 15 year olds rank 38th
I guess what saddens me most about this entire topic, is that we keep telling our children to look beyond race, embrace diversity, treat each other as equals…and yet every time the news comes on, someone is dividing themselves back out of the group when it suits their cause.
What happened to encouraging people to become better instead of foisting the victim label forcefully upon them? When did it start being acceptable to set such minimal expectations for an entire generation of children?
I’ll tell you when. When everyone got a trophy, when we had 30 Snow Whites in a play, when we told educators that the lowest score they could give was 50 (instead of 0…don’t take the test, get half credit)…when we stopped children from building their own self esteem and started creating it for them.
We need to fail…as individuals…we need to fail. We learn from failure, we are supposed to work harder to improve and prevent the same failure. Instead, we soft peddle everything and try to find some causation for low performance so that children don’t feel bad.
I am covered with scars from failures and mistakes. And I will tell you this, every one of those scars taught me a lesson…I took that lesson and built on it. When I came crashing out of the sky like a Chinese satellite (google Tiangong-1) on my first attempt to clear a certain triple jump on my bike, my mother didn’t run to the track and tell them to move the jumps closer together so I could clear them (possibly because I didn’t let her in on the accident). I worked harder and practiced more so I could clear them on my own. I earned that jump and I was proud.
Shouldn’t we have that same attitude towards education?
How has no one taken a step back and realized that this woman is in it for personal gain…children be damned? Appalling to say the least. She wants her 15 minutes and knows that just slinging the word race into her math education text will get her the spotlight.
I have an idea…what if we just stopped counting race? No more surveys…no more lines on the census, take that question out of college applications. Let’s stop tracking anything by race. This way, we can’t compare and we can’t divide…isn’t that what we have been telling our kids all along?
Above the Nonsense 