Seattle Schools: Math Racist, Oppressed Need Liberation From the Right Answer
by R. Cort Kirkwood
TheNewAmerican.com
Thursday, 03 October 2019
In Seattle, mathematics is no longer a matter of addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, or integers, fractions, and variables.
A government-school document shows that students in Seattle will learn math in an “ethnic studies framework” that depicts the subject as oppressive, and that the right answer to a math question might be relative to a person’s ethnicity and culture.
Upshot of the course: Math is a racist tool the white man uses to oppress “people of color.”
Words are nearly insufficient to describe the insanity of the proposal, but words aren’t really necessary.
The curriculum itself does a pretty good job. It is self-evidently idiotic.
Three Parts
The “framework,” which radio talker Jason Rantz of 770KTTH reported as “preliminary,” comprises three parts: themes, learning targets, and essential questions.
The five themes define what students will learn in a few brief sentences. “Origins, Identity, and Agency” will teach students that “mathematical theory and application is rooted in the ancient histories of people and empires of color.”
“Power and Oppression” will impart another dubious lesson: “The ways in which individuals and groups define mathematical knowledge so as to see ‘Western’ mathematics as the only legitimate expression of mathematical identity and intelligence. This definition of legitimacy is then used to disenfranchise people and communities of color. This erases the historical contributions of people and communities of color.”
The Rest…HERE
