Teacher group: Math is ‘the domain of old, white men’

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – According to a Teach for America website, culturally responsive teaching in math is important because “math has traditionally been seen as the domain of old, White men.”

As reported earlier this week, Teach for America groups across the country are committing themselves to “culturally responsive teaching,” a radical pedagogy used by communist Bill Ayers and other blatant anti-American indoctrinators.

The site, Culturally Responsive Teaching, Teach for America, says that because math is seen as a domain for old, white men, many students cannot identify with it. Therefore, educators should find ways to relate math to the lives of their students.

Judging from the math curriculum recommended, this TFA group, like all other social justice educators, wants minorities to believe that what relates most to their lives in America is racism and oppression.

For example, the site recommends “Critically Conscious Mathematics” and “Radical Math.”

Radical Math was created by educator Jonathan Osler several years ago while teaching at El Puenta Academy in New Jersey. Osler taught Radical Math along-side Cathy Wilkerson, a former member of the Weather Underground Organization (with Bill Ayers) who once participated in a plot to detonate a nail bomb at a dance for military personnel at Fort Dix.

What could go wrong?

More at EAG News

via Glenn

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Yeah. Sure. Tell it to Grace Hopper. She built COBOL. Tell it to Emma Noether. She did the math for Einstein. Tell it to lots of other women of math.
Don’t know math? Don’t know the modern world.
I am very biased. I have a Ph. D. in math. Math rules. Just look around. All our modern technology runs on math. It got started with Galileo, who replaced Aristotle with math.
This is pure Dewey spew. One doesn’t relate to math. One learns math. One cannot apply math to anything until one learns to work the machinery. It would be like trying to operate a bulldozer without knowing which lever operated which function. Cannot be done in ignorance.
It just so happened that an otherwise unemployed group of men (second and third sons of Emirs) had the free time to do math (Al-Khworizmi and others). Free time is essential, as there is much thinking involved. And that work got to Europe and was picked up by Fibonacci. And the rest is history.
The facts are that many cultures had the opportunity to develop math together with the scientific method, but only one culture did. And that culture was European. Bits and pieces were done elsewhere (China, Japan, India). But only one culture took the idea and ran with it.
And we got: electricity, radio, television, radar, steam locomotives, ocean steam ships, automobiles, powered flight, space flight, computers, incandescent and fluorescent light…I could go on. Without math none of the rest would have happened.
For example: radio. You may not know this, but Maxwell’s math stated that there would be radiation from a certain mechanical action. No one had ever imagined such a thing. His equations had to balance, that was all. But Hertz was able to generate and detect the unsuspected radiation! And radio was off and running.
It is the age-old dichotomy: do you bring yourself to the subject, or does the subject have to come to you, hat in hand?
The answer should be obvious, but it is not so to TFA.

@mathman: The left simply wants to give their voting bloc an excuse to be stupid. And, since the left prefers the stupid (easier to gain the vote, my dear), they teach being stupid.

And we got: electricity, radio, television, radar, steam locomotives, ocean steam ships, automobiles, powered flight, space flight, computers, incandescent and fluorescent light…I could go on. Without math none of the rest would have happened.

Remember, we only achieved all that with Muslim help.

@mathman: Hurrah for mathman, but please explain Dewey Spew. Do you refer to the politician of the past or to the man of the decimal system?

I hope this isn’t a stupid question. I often get locked onto a tangent and miss the obvious.

“Therefore, educators should find ways to relate math to the lives of their students.”
We used to do that, but modern educators said that it was too hard and irrelevant.
They were called “word problems”.
They could be modernized, I guess.
“If the earth’s temperature has remained stable over the last twenty years, how much would it have cooled if Global Warming did not exist?
For extra credit: How many years will it be before AGW alarmists begin reducing their own carbon footprint?”

For any one doing pure science and engineering, math is the keystone. You need your algebra, calculus, stats, and basic math for your deductive reasoning. To master math, learn the rules and do the problems. It should be an acquired skill using patience and dedication. Practice is the mother of skill.

What the hell do they teach in universities today?

@Petercat:

“If the earth’s temperature has remained stable over the last twenty years, how much would it have cooled if Global Warming did not exist?

Magnificent, but we need the answer. If global warming doesn’t exist the temperature is unaffected. If AGW exists, perhaps its effect is so negligible, it fails to register. Since Al Gore and his barking seals claimed the temp would rise 1C over a hundred years, should we assume the earth has been cooling at a rate of .2 C in 20 years and AGW neutralized the cooling? LOL

And, that’s why kids cannot do simple arithmetic. Basic fundamentals are missing.

While many marvel at the smart kid can find a different way looking at cancer, ask them a basic question, they will draw a blank. One question that was asked to graduate with honors in chemistry (BA/BS degree) was how can you tell if the solution you had was a permanganate solution? Those answering the question offered complex ways to determine if the solution had permanganate. None of the six, graduating students gave the correct answer.

What the hell do they teach in universities today?

That often depends on the racial and/or ethnic background of the student. Whites and Asians are usually held to a minimum grade average of ~ 73% while others pass with something like 63-67%. Some of these reduced grade average “students” simply have to show up on the first day of class and on finals and quiz days in order to pass (their grades, or lack thereof, aren’t even taken into account).

Btw, back in 2000 I had a very competent Black computer science professor who absolutely hated the fact that he was forced to pass non White/Asian students who missed 90+ % of their classes.

Skook,

John Dewey, education “reformist.” His theories were beloved by Lenin and (in the early years of his rule) Stalin.

Mathman,

I think the math revolution is actually Copernican.

My brother is six year younger than I am. He started the “new Math” that was in vogue in the 1960s. He had major problems all through advanced mathematics because of the lack of sense the “new Math” made. The academic leftists also dropped phonics from the reading and spelling program. A child was to learn the whole word instead of learning to pronounce the word using phonetic sounds. So, a whole generation of kids can not read or else they hate to read. Common core will condemn several generations to ignorance, but then they would be candidates as left wing voters. Can that be the goal?

@Skook: answer: One $9 million mansion on the California coast

I didn’t get into math theory, but I found Kepler’s Harmony of the Spheres fascinating. To visualize the planets making music in their orbits is either the work of a genius or a madman. I wish he would have recorded that music with Garage Band. I’d like to hear that music instead of Willy’s Roadhouse on a long trip.

@Bill: A modest bungalow.

I know some old white men who are using math skills in engineering, chemistry, biology, etc., trying to cope with the biggest oil spill of all time. For millenia this oil spill has seeped into the groundwater and has affected aboriginals, pioneers, lawyers, and econut cases like no other. It has caught the attention of Algore, Aljizzera, the Rockefeller and Suzuki Foundations,most environmental groups, and the all knowing Hollywood types. While controlling this spill, Canadians will have 700 years of oil production at current rates. This oil spill is the Athabasca Oil Sands.

@oil guy from Alberta: Yes, but there are no jobs, with green energy there are all kinds of jobs, B.O. Plenty promised, so the Libs are waiting for those jobs.

Skook 12,

The only reason I mentioned Copernicus is because after the “Revolution” was made available, the really only reason it gained (albeit grudging) acceptance early on over the Ptolemaic system was that it made the math simpler.

@MAKAYA: Copernicus was just hung up on that geocentric theory; of course, in those days, it was important to make your theories align with the church. Pythagoras and Ptolemy and several others dabbled in the music of the planets or spheres, but Kepler was the first to prognosticate political events on astrology and apparently he had success.

Galileo grinding the glass for his telescope was magnificent and asking Kepler to review his studies was a compliment and truly a time of discovery. Let us not forget that Shakespeare was writing continuously at the same time. It is hard to imagine, with so few people in the world, how such magnificent minds were functioning in such trying time. Where political and religious heresy could mean losing your head or worse. The Bubonic Plague ravaged Europe and Infant Death Syndrome killed by the thousands. A hard time with a few minds that stand out among billions.

@Skookum: Skook, are you telling us that there was not a consensus concerning the truth? Are you telling me that the 97% consensus then was wrong? If you listen to all of the lefties, if there is 97% consensus, it must be the truth!!!

Math is the domain of people who don’t vote early and often for any candidate with a “D” next to their name.

Math is the domain of those who don’t worship 0Muslim.

Math is the domain of people who aren’t living off of public assistance.

@Randy: The composition of All Life is based on three molecules, each performs critical functions within every organic cell and are necessary for life itself.

DNA and RNA are nucleic acids responsible for transmitting life’s genetic codes during reproduction.

RNA (a polymeric ribonucleic acid) composed of one or more nucleotides, formed in a chain of nucleotides at each link having a base, sugar, ribose, and phosphate. The DNA strand is more complex in its basic structure; a dual strand termed the Double Helix by J. Watson.

Now, in science there is no consensus, there is only proof that can be repeated; otherwise, you have only conjecture, and when conjecture is supported by political opinion you have garbage, at best.

If we can discover the secrets of DNA and RNA, why are we relying on computer models and conjecture?

Randy, please email me your situational awareness of the Sunni/Shiite in Iraq and or Syria. I am trying to write an article on the schism and I would appreciate some first hand experience.