Empower Wisconsin | Oct. 29, 2019
We know bad math when we see it.
According to Seattle’s public school system, though, math is downright racist.
At least that’s what the woke members of the Seattle Public School Ethnic Advisory Committee have ciphered.
Mathematics, the committee insists, is the language of oppression.
As the Daily Caller reports, the group’s Math Ethnic Studies “framework” suggests math is subjective, used over history to compute unequal terms.
“Who gets to say if an answer is right?” the report asks. Answer: Math.
“(H)ow is math manipulated to allow inequality and oppression to persist?” Answer: It isn’t.
Math is the great equalizer. It can be challenging, it can be terribly frustrating. But math, unlike people, doesn’t lie. People of all races have struggled learning math. People of all races have succeeded by using math.
To the math = racism crowd, however, solving for x is “used to disenfranchise people and communities of color.”
That’s how some in Wisconsin try to explain away frighteningly bad public school math scores.
But it’s really just the soft bigotry of low expectations rearing its ugly head again in our classrooms.
That kind of thinking just doesn’t add up.