Mark Charalambous
“Equality” is so sixties. Insufficient—and indeed, wrong—by
the new calculus of “equity.” Equality of opportunity has failed to produce equal
outcomes. The only possible explanation is… systemic racism. Hence, the
replacement of equality—which implies
nothing about equal outcomes—with equity,
which does.
What might be unthinkable to past champions of civil rights such
as MLK has now been normalized. Skin color as a valid discretionary criterion
is promoted not only by the usual suspects in academe, but also by their comrades
in Hollywood and mainstream media. Naysayers are “de-platformed”—i.e. silenced—by
the woke oligarchs of social media whose control over the public square have
made them the ultimate arbiters of reality.
And now, the “decolonization” of the liberal arts in
academia breaches the once-sacred halls of mathematics.
For those with no idea what this is about, a movement is
afoot across the country to transform education as we know it. A radical
thought contagion, Critical Race Theory, has taken hold of the Brahmins of
higher ed., those who determine the shape of education in your child’s
classroom. Whites, we are told (no further derivative of national origin or
ethnicity is required—color of skin is sufficient), wield an imperialist, white
supremacist worldview which bulldozes over the timeworn fabric of other, “oppressed” cultures, creating a “systemically
racist” educational system in its own image.
A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,
a training guide for math teachers developed in California, seeks to redirect
all facets of mathematics pedagogy through a transformation matrix of “dismantling
racism in mathematical instruction.” Math teachers are instructed to “engage, reflect,
plan and act” to dismantle white supremacy culture in math classrooms, and
become “anti-racist” math teachers.
The introductory paragraph to
the first of the five components in the “toolkit” (“Stride 1: Dismantling
Racism in Mathematics Instruction”) explains its purpose.
“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 visibilizing the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture
with respect to math.”
More edu-speak jargon follows:
“In order to embody
antiracist math education, teachers must engage in critical praxis that interrogates
the ways in which they perpetuate white supremacy culture in their own
classrooms, and develop a plan toward antiracist math education to address
issues of equity for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students.”
How does “white supremacy infiltrate
math classrooms”? The toolkit includes these examples:
·
“Getting the ‘right’ answer”
You may have thought getting the right answer to a math problem
was important… like, that was the whole idea? But you would be wrong:
“The
concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and
teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always
right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
·
Students
are required to “show their work”
This tried-and-true method to determine a student’s mathematical
reasoning ability (as well as to preclude cheating) is, we are told, evidence
of white supremacy culture:
“Asking students to show their work …
becomes a crutch for teachers seeking to understand what students are thinking
and less of a tool for students in learning how to process… requiring students
to show their work reinforces worship of the written word as well as paternalism.”
·
“Addressing
mistakes”
Even correcting errors comes under fire:
“Teachers often treat mistakes as problems by equating them with
wrongness, rather than treating them [as] opportunities for learning—which
reinforces the ideas of perfectionism (that
students shouldn’t make mistakes) and paternalism
(teachers or other experts can and should correct mistakes).”
·
“Teachers are teachers and students are
students”
Recognizing the
different roles teacher and student play in the learning process “reinforces
the ideas of paternalism and
powerhoarding. When students bring a different approach to doing math,
teachers often get defensive and
see it as a challenge to the power structures in the classroom.”
Instead, the training
directs the teacher to “Learn to shift your position to a facilitator, rather than
a knowledge giver, by having someone observe your classroom specifically to
identify the way that power is distributed.”
That last instruction is ominously reminiscent of communist re-education
camps where Red Guards preside over the indoctrination of the “bourgeoisie.”
This intent is further reinforced in the “Reflect” sections where teachers
are required to fill in “Reflection Notes” in response to prompts such as: “In what ways have I incorporated antiracist practices into
my classroom? How can I incorporate
more antiracist practices into my classroom? Do I see myself as the
holder of authority in my classroom? In what ways can this power imbalance
affect students’ ability to learn math? How do I or can I share the classroom’s
authority and autonomy with students?” and tellingly, “ _________________ will hold me accountable for this plan in
the following ways:”
The teacher-training component of the training is explicitly
addressed in the Stride 5 component, “Sustaining Equitable Practice.” The
compliance directions read like an instructional manual for 1984’s Thought Police or something
devised by L. Ron Hubbard.
* * *
The modern history of education in
the U.S. has been the march of one pedagogic theory after another, usually
purposed to address long-standing disparities in educational achievement by Blacks.
The “self-esteem” fad lasted for decades before common sense finally set in. Next,
the “multiple intelligences” and “learning styles” theories to explain embarrassing
race-differentiated standardized test results. More recently we have the
whimsical “flipping” the classroom. In algebra, there’s been movements to
re-focus the introductory teaching through application problems first (not as the dreaded word problems
that come at the end of the exercise set), rather than starting with the
nuts-and-bolts teaching of the grammar of algebra. More often than not such “new”
reforms revert back to the previous mode once the novelty has worn off or the
grant has run out, and enough time has elapsed. There's a good reason why the college campus has become the national joke that half the country still doesn't get.
Despite their intent, these
“reforms” usually end up just further dumbing-down educational standards. (If
you don’t believe this, compare primary and secondary school math tests over
the last 150 years or so.) But the equity movement’s anti-racist math is far
more destructive. None of the previous reform movements specifically targeted one segment of the population,
singling them out as villains directly responsible for the failures of others.
That many of the people promoting the demonization of “whiteness” are
themselves self-othering Whites does nothing to diminish its malignancy.
* * *
Critical Race Theory’s infiltration into the curricula requires discrimination. By race. Yes,
by that crudest of measuring rods: color of skin. Consider Columbia U.’s six different
identity-dependent graduation ceremonies this year. This is not unique. The
segregation by race of graduation commencements, dormitories, freshmen
orientations and more is becoming the new normal on campuses across the nation.
Apply large angular momentum to the grave of MLK.
This new
zeitgeist is some unholy paradoxical combination of diversity-worship with pure
racial scapegoating. The woke Left has, indeed, made everything “all about race.” The guiding light of anti-racist
teaching is Ibram X. Kendi, a celebrated author and academician who has made a
nifty business out of it and is referenced throughout Pathway. He believes literally everything is racist. According to
Kendi’s celebrated best-seller, How to Be
an Anti-Racist, “there is no such thing as a not-racist idea, only racist
ideas and antiracist ideas.” Thoughts inform ideas, and in the realm of
government, ideas inform policies. “Every policy in every institution in every
community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or
equity,” he claims.
Kendi’s
hatred of whites is so deep he confesses to once believing they were aliens.
His totalitarian worldview presents a terrifying Stalinist vision of a future for
the U.S. where a Department of Anti-Racism promulgated by an anti-racist
amendment to the Constitution, “comprised of formally trained experts on racism
and no political appointees,” would operate impervious to any electoral
oversight. It would be responsible for “preclearing all local, state and
federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity,” further,
to “monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial
inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas…
empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and
public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.”
Kendi proudly admits that affirmative action is inherently
discriminatory—and justified: “racial discrimination is not inherently racist.”
How’s this for Orwellian ‘doublespeak’: “The defining question is whether the
discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating
equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it
is racist. . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.
The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only
remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Orwell’s 1984 redux:
“Who
controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the
past.”
Kendi is a professor at Boston University, a #1 New York Times best-selling author and
celebrated as one of Time magazine’s
100 Most Influential People in 2020. Sadly, what he is selling, Americans are
clearly buying.
These racial-equity-in-education programs are in the works across
the country. Here in Massachusetts, Professional
Development Institute on Racial Equity in Pedagogy and Practice is
currently in development by the Department of Higher Ed and UMass-Boston.
The reflexive property of mathematics holds that a thing is
equal to itself. Ibram Kendi is a racist. A
Pathway to Equitable Mathematics Instruction is racist; as are any efforts
to deconstruct and “de-colonize” “white supremacist mathematics.” Stop it now.
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