Is Public Schooling Racist?

Discussion in 'Education' started by Wulfschilde, Sep 14, 2020.

  1. Wulfschilde

    Wulfschilde Active Member

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    Recently, California took a variety of steps to abolish the standardized SAT and ACT tests from being considered in college admissions. From now on, universities will consider a variety of factors, such as ethnicity and need, when determining who will be admitted to a given college.

    This begs the question of why we should have public schooling at all. Particularly among people of color whose cultures have never had public schooling in the past, public school can be traumatic and emotionally damaging. We know for a fact that young people of some ethnicities, particularly blacks, are also punished at disproportionate rates within the public school system, which makes public schooling a part of systemic racism. If we are not going to engage in standardized testing of students because the standardized testing attempts to force everyone into the same mold (which is racist) why should we kick the proverbial can down the road and expect everyone to attend public school, which may only become increasingly standardized now that the standardized tests are gone, when we know they are likely to experience racism there?
     
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2020
  2. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Have they? I found some reports about a proposition on the November ballot about reversing a ban on "affirmative action" but nothing else.
     
  3. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    Why not? When everything "is racist" nothing is racist.
     
  4. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Learning is about overcoming you inner difficulties. Public schools are more and more jokes, and I wouldn't advise a lot of public training either to black or white people.
    You can give a ton of award to people "you're special", but in the end if they don't have the skills, they simply don't. Those college would just the few remain of trust there was in there.
     
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  5. joesnagg

    joesnagg Banned

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    Ya gotta love these people, if they can't find racism or a racist lurking behind every bush, WELL THERE DAMN WELL SHOULD BE!
     
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  6. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    The Woke Police have come for Mathematics.
    Is It Racist to Expect Black Kids to Do Math for Real?

    John McWhorter, Substack

    There is a document getting around called Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction, a guide put together by a group of educators. It has a black boy on the cover.

    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 be resisted, as this lovely pamphlet is teaching us that it is racist to expect black kids to master the precision of math. To wit – its message, penned by people who consider themselves some of the most morally advanced souls in the history of the human species, is one that Strom Thurmond would have happily taken a swig of whiskey to. . . .
     
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  7. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    Have you read the document, "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction"? What part of it supports your opinion that it's not a good way to teach math?
     
  8. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    I have not read it, but through long experience I trust McWhorter. He writes:

    ". . . Many will dislike the general flavor of it but, amidst so much we all have to pay attention to, may question just what we must object to specifically about Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.

    There are two things. Racism and religion. Just those.

    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.

    Humans may grievously sacrifice the 9-year-old, the virgin, or the widow upon the pyre in worship of a God. Too, humans may sacrifice the black kid from the work of mastering the gift of math, in favor of showing that they are enlightened enough to understand that her life may be affected by racism and that therefore she should be shielded from anything that is a genuine challenge.

    This is not pedagogy; it is preaching.

    And in this country, religious propositions have no place in the public square."
     
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  9. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    Before we get into our opinions about such stuff, I think we need to make sure we're complaining about something legitimate. The claim that the document is "teaching us that it is racist to expect black kids to master the precision of math" is in question. Can you show me where it says that?
     
  10. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    McWhorter again:

    ". . . More to the point is that this entire document is focused on an idea that making black kids be precise is immoral.

    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.”

    You may wonder if this is a cartoon but no, this is real! This is actually what this document tells us, again and again. This, folks, is the “Critical Race Theory” that so many of us are resisting, not a simple program for “social justice.” To distrust this document is not to be against social justice, but against racism. . . ."
     
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  11. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    Quoting McWhorter isn't what I was asking about. Have you looked at the actual document and read down through for evidence to support the suggestion that this has anything to do with not making kids precise?
     
  12. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    I think my wording may be a problem above. The focus of the comments should be on the evidence part and not on what you may or may not have read.
     
  13. dharbert

    dharbert Well-Known Member

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    It's 2021. Everything is racist. Didn't you know?
     
  14. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    This is one quote in particular that breaks down the claim that this is about teaching students that they don't need to be precise. My first problem with that claim is that it comes from people who have not read through the workbook (or document).

    From pg 13--

    The second problem is that without experience in the classroom, many readers make false assumptions about intentions. Reading through the document, I see two major points to consider.

    First point is that this pedagogy is nothing new, though it's not terribly common in basic math classes. It attempts, for example, to break down the notion that there is only one way to arrive at an answer. Standardized testing has reinforced this concept. There have been instances where students were told their answers were wrong because they arrived at them using other methods, even when the actual answer was correct.

    And many students lose interest because it's presented in a very abstract sort of way. Memorizing functions is one thing, but understanding through hands-on experience can be much more relevant to students who have little interest in math. Again, testing requires that teachers rush through the curriculum to cover the required goals. In other words, this is about approaching learning from the perspective of interest rather than test results.

    There is much more to the pedagogy, but I'll leave it that for now and address the second part, the "racist" element. If we separate that out of the equation, the pedagogy is a sound theory. It looks at other approaches to learning and can help many students learn better and think critically about how and why. In other words, loading a workshop with the language of racism adds nothing helpful to the strategies proposed--and I do think that's what McWhorter was getting at, even if he is ignorant of methods of teaching and how students learn.

    I've seen much lately about the "anti-racist" approach, and though I see that as a problem, it's uninformed to attack the teaching methods. People should be attacking the idea of framing everything as racist--which seems to be racist. We absolutely do need to understand that we live in a world dominated by attitudes that dismiss minorities as substandard and have little to offer us. Our way isn't the only way, and it's the best way only because we say it is and we are the majority. We're only a few generations away from losing the majority status that allows us to dominate.

    The workbook in question seems to be a standard kind of workshop offered in most states for the purpose of earning Continuing Education credits for license renewal. It also seems to be spiced with the 'rage du jour' for the purpose of getting noticed. Because teachers are free to choose the workshops they want, and because there is a lot of competition to sell those workshops, some kind of marketing strategy is needed to make them sound relevant and vital to Education.
     
  15. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    I have not read the document and I don't intend to. As I posted earlier, I have read McWhorter for a long time and my default position is to trust his judgment.
     
  16. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    You shouldn't trust him because he clearly got it wrong.
     
  17. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    No offense, but I trust his assessment more than I trust yours.


    John McWhorter - Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org › wiki › John_McWhorter


    John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and associate professor of English and ... "Frances Fox Piven, Jim Sleeper and Me". The New Republic.
     
  18. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    sounds like fake news to me
     
  19. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    There Is No Such Thing as 'White Math'

    Sergiu Klainerman, Common Sense

    ". . . Math, with its seemingly unbiased tools — 2 + 2 always equals 4 — has presented a problem for an ideological movement that sees any inequality of outcome as evidence of systemic bias. The problem cannot be that some kids are better at math, or that some teachers are better at teaching it. Like so much else, the basic woke argument against math is that it is inherently racist and needs to be made antiracist. That is accomplished by undermining the notion of right and wrong answers, by getting rid of the expectation that students show their work, by referring to mathematical testing tools as racist, and by doing away with accelerated math classes.

    If that sounds like a caricature, I urge you to read this whole document, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which Sergiu writes about below. As the linguist John McWhorter put it in a powerful piece published yesterday: “to distrust this document is not to be against social justice, but against racism.”

    Sergiu wrote me in an email that the situation in his field reminds him of this line from Thomas Sowell: “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”. . . ."
     
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  20. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    I'm a retired English teacher, and would say that McWhorter may have experience at the post high school level, but that's a very different world from K12. Like I said previously, if you actually read the workshop handout, you'll see that he's pushing a narrative that's not true.

    And this also proves what I said about this narrative of misunderstanding. This nonsense about 2+2 not equaling 4 is taking hold in people's minds, and that's not what these workshops are promoting. If anyone cares to read the workbooks, they will learn that this isn't about multiple answers, but about teaching in a way that doesn't limit math classes to only finding answers.

    The main idea here is that there is more to how we learn math than simply finding an answer and moving on to the next calculation. This is all about alternative methods of teaching math, not about a lack of objectivity in math itself. It's surprising to see such well-credentialed people jumping to that conclusion. It's even worse to see them taking part in a disinformation campaign. Math itself is not biased and these workshops make no such claim.

    Seriously, if Klainerman, McWhorter, and even Sowell were to spend a year in the classroom, they would come away with a very different perspective of things.

    And again, having said that, I very much disagree with the idea of re-marketing some old concepts as anti-racist in order to promote that narrative and sell workshops. While we do need to understand that engaging different ethnic groups in education requires different methods and strategies, the race package is, IMO, totally unnecessary, and potentially dangerous.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2021
  21. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    I would say that learning how to find the right answer is 100% of math for almost all students.
     
  22. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    That's not the issue. The right answer is a requirement and no one is challenging that. It's about how students learn and taking different approaches to that.
     
  23. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    This is a quote from your #20.
    The main idea here is that there is more to how we learn math than simply finding an answer and moving on to the next calculation.
     
  24. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Word is getting out.

    The Latest In Official "Antiracist" Ideology: Black Kids Are Too Stupid To Learn Math

    March 02, 2021/ Francis Menton

    • It’s been obvious for a while now to anyone paying attention that the currently hot progressive policy agenda going by the name “antiracism” is actually itself racism, and a particularly virulent and insidious species of racism at that.

    • The use of the term “antiracism” reflects Orwellian abuse of language taken to a whole new extreme.

    • As the “antiracism” cause took over public discourse during the last couple of years, I have offered several comments, for example here and here. In the first of those posts, from April 6, 2019, I noted that the “antiracism” agenda evidenced: the utter contempt in which the self-anointed elites of our country hold members of minority groups, most particularly African Americans. Somehow, these elites — or at least some very substantial number of them — have decided that African Americans are not capable of accepting personal responsibility in life or of being treated like adults.

    • And just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, we now have something called the “Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” just issued by some huge collection of West Coast “educators.”
    READ MORE
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2021
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  25. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    And that's exactly right. There are many who get lost with calculations and quickly lose interest. The point here is the binge and purge model of memorizing functions should not be the only way. The workshops promote generating interest from a variety of ways. Looking at different ways the knowledge can be applied to the daily reality of students who don't grow up in higher social/income classes where something like trigonometry is never discussed or is a virtual unknown.
     

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