Oregon Pushes Idea That Math Is Racist, Encourages Teachers to Dismantle White Supremacy
The Oregon Department of Education is promoting a course for teachers that links math lessons to racism and a culture of “white supremacy.”
The department last week sent out an online pamphlet for a course called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” which includes a section on “Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” The pamphlet includes materials that are essentially a course for spreading wokeness inside of classrooms.
The ODE-promoted course brands itself as “an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and Multilingual students in grades 6-8, addresses barriers to math equity, and aligns instruction to grade-level priority standards.” The course challenges the reality that some answers are simply wrong while broadly challenging America’s founding principles.
According to the course syllabus, there are five “strides” that can help educators banish “racism” from math in their classrooms. In the dismantling racism section, the course asks teachers to examine their “actions, beliefs, and values around teaching mathematics” with the apparent goal of shaming them into making lessons about identity politics.
“White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions. Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on [minority] students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics,” the section states.
The course section also identifies “ways in which white supremacy shows up in math classrooms.”
According to the teaching materials, too much focus on asking students to get the “right” answer when solving math problems is connected to white supremacy, as is working independently. The course favors group math work for students.
“Often the emphasis is placed on learning math in the ‘real world,’ as if our classrooms are not a part of the real world. This reinforces notions of either/or thinking because math is only seen as useful when it is in a particular context,” the dismantling racism section states. “However, this can result in using mathematics to uphold capitalist and imperialist ways of being and understandings of the world.”
The course goes on to target both “capitalism” and “imperialism,” while suggesting math lessons be used to help develop the neighborhoods of underprivileged kids.
The materials also invite teachers to ask themselves how “mathematics can help solve problems affecting students’ communities,” and to recognize “the ways that communities of color engage in mathematics and problem solving in their everyday lives.”
Furthermore, the course will ask teachers to identify and “challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so,” the course states. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
The course appears to be voluntary for teachers who wish to learn better ways to promote Marxist ideals. But it’s critical race theory on steroids² – 1,776 + 1,619.
For example, the Marxist materials state, ”We cannot dismantle racism in a system that exploits people for private profit … If we want to dismantle racism, then we must build a movement for economic justice.”
This is the state, or at least the future, of the country’s education system. Teachers in cities across the country are currently holding districts hostage by using the coronavirus pandemic to keep schools closed. Once many of those teachers finally get around to doing their jobs, some kids will likely be further underserved by lessons that are not relevant to promoting critical thinking — at least in the Beaver State.
The course, more or less, seems to be an attack on the fundamentals of the country while using objective number-crunching as a pretext. It also infers that minorities do not have the ability to solve problems — which itself seems kind of racist.
In Oregon, the idea that there are wrong answers to math problems is being challenged, as is the notion that minority kids are capable of competing in STEM activities without assistance.
Apparently every lesson will be one where slackers all sit around the smart kid waiting for that person to come up with the correct answer. Weren’t those rare group opportunities fun?
It isn’t clear, beyond the Marxist-rhetoric-serving adults, how students are supposed to actually benefit from the absurd social experiment that the course is.
If you’re wondering where something so brazenly anti-American originated from, the lesson thanks the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for its “generous financial support.”
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