Math education prof: 2+2 = 4 'trope' 'reeks of white supremacy patriarchy'

Math professors and academics at top universities, including Harvard and the University of Illinois, discussed the “Eurocentric” roots of American mathematics on Twitter. They asserted that the statement “2 plus 2 equals 4” is rooted in Western definitions of mathematics.

Math professors and educators at leading American universities have taken to Twitter in order to debate whether math is racist.

Some asserted that objective mathematics is rooted in “white supremacist patriarchy” and white social constructs.

The debate itself was rooted in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, in which citizens of a fictional totalitarian state believe that 2 plus 2 equals 5 as a result of government propaganda.

Laurie Rubel, who teaches math education at Brooklyn College, says that the idea of math being cultural neutral is a "myth," and that asking whether 2 plus 2 equals 4 "reeks of white supremacist patriarchy."

“Y’all must know that the idea that math is objective or neutral IS A MYTH,” she tweeted.

Rochelle Gutierrez, who teaches “Sociopolitical Perspectives on Mathematics and Science Education” at the University of Illinois, responded to a tweet from a former educator claiming that the U.S. "colonizes" math.

"By now it is well known, for example, that other cultures were using the theorem we call Pythagorean, yet we still refer to it with this name. This is colonization and erasure," the tweet from the former educator read.

Gutierrez responded with, "YES! This attends to the Cultures/Histories dimension of RM (addressing Western/Eurocentric maths). And, we also want to attend to the Living Practice dimension (which is more about imagining a version that builds upon ancestral knowings, but does not yet exist)."

Kareem Carr, a Ph.D. student at Harvard University, weighed in with, "People say it's subjectivism to ask if math is Western. I don't get that. It's an objective fact that some groups were more involved in the creation of modern math than others. They may have been *trying* to make it objective but it's not stupid to ask if they actually succeeded!"

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Pick your OWN results: British Government rips up exam system to give pupils 'triple lock' on grades in extraordinary new plan unveiled just ONE day before A-levels are announced

Students were given a 'triple lock' on their A-level and GCSE grades last night as ministers ripped up the system in the wake of the Scottish exams fiasco.

Just 36 hours before A-level results are released, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said students could now opt for the grades they got in their mock exams.

It means A-level students can choose between the marks they get awarded tomorrow – which are based on teacher assessments and a computer-generated 'standardisation' model – or their mock results.

If they are not happy with either of those, they can sit the exam in the autumn, with the Government covering the cost for schools.

Mr Williamson was forced to offer the unprecedented 'triple lock', which will also apply to GCSE pupils, after Nicola Sturgeon performed a U-turn on Scotland's exam results.

Last week, Scottish pupils sitting the equivalent of A-levels received their computer-moderated grades under a similar system to that being used in the rest of the UK.

However, 125,000 results – about one in four – were downgraded from what teachers had predicted, leading to an outcry and complaints that disadvantaged pupils had been hardest hit.

Yesterday, the Scottish government opted for a humiliating U-turn and said that despite concerns over grade inflation, all results would now revert to those that teachers had predicted.

Government ministers are thought to be nervous about a similar row erupting in England when A-level results are released tomorrow.

Home-school pupils are left in limbo

Home-schooled children face having their lives put on hold because they were 'forgotten' during lockdown, a senior Tory MP warned yesterday.

Students studying for A-levels and GCSEs privately will miss out on grades this week after exams were cancelled because of the coronavirus outbreak.

They may be able to sit papers in the autumn but this will be too late for university and sixth-form college applications.

Unlike students in schools and colleges, they didn't have teachers who could submit 'assessed grades' to exam boards.

Tory MP Robert Halfon, who chairs the education select committee, said: 'It's looking pretty bleak for these children. It just seems these kids have been forgotten about during lockdown.'

Hannah Titley, of the Home Schooling Association, said private candidates had been 'unfairly disadvantaged'.

The number of home-schooled children soared by 15 per cent last year – from 52,770 to 60,544 in a 12-month period.

Mr Williamson said England would not allow teachers' predicted grades to stand, because it would lead to unacceptable grade inflation from the previous year.

He insisted his new system would ensure pupils received the 'fairest results possible' after the summer exams were cancelled due to the pandemic.

The last-minute change will lead to further accusations that the Government has not got a grip of yet another aspect of the crisis, following failures over care homes, schools, testing, travel and the provision of PPE to NHS staff.

Mr Williamson said: 'Every young person waiting for their results wants to know that they have been treated fairly.

'By ensuring students have the safety net of their mock results as well as the chance of sitting autumn exams, we are creating a triple-lock process to ensure they can have the confidence to take the next steps forward in work or education.'

Schools will need to demonstrate to exams regulator Ofqual that mocks were taken in exam-like conditions, but the process is expected to be significantly streamlined.

The Government said it would set aside £30 million to fund autumn exams for all schools, easing the burden on budgets already stretched to deal with coronavirus measures.

'The SNP failed the test, but we have done more revision,' one government source said.

'This decision in Scotland was a bad decision. It means that in Scotland there are now students walking round with inflated grades that no one will take seriously.

'It's not fair for students this year and it's not fair for students last year. Our system is fundamentally fairer.'

In Scotland, outrage was prompted by the system resulting in deprived students being treated more than twice as harshly as the best-off.

Health bosses are looking to cash in on the record numbers of students expected to go through clearing by offering more places on nursing degrees.

They will send direct emails to 50,000 people and post ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, appealing to those entering the clearing system to apply for nursing courses.

Officials hope the stability of NHS careers will appeal to the 'Covid Generation' – those who are likely to suffer long-term consequences from the pandemic.

Nursing course applications have already surged by 16 per cent this year to more than 47,000 by the end of June. Much of the increase is attributed to the leading role nurses have played in the country's response to coronavirus.

England's top nurse, Ruth May, said the We Are The NHS campaign wanted to harness the institution's rising popularity by appealing to the next generation of healthcare staff.

Fighting for his political career yesterday, SNP education secretary John Swinney said the standardisation would be unwound.

'We set out to ensure that the system was fair. We set out to ensure it was credible. But we did not get it right for all young people,' he said.

Only days earlier, Mr Swinney had justified the exams procedure by revealing that without it, top grades would have surged by up to an unprecedented 14 per cent.

Yesterday's decision means this inflation will come to pass – and raises questions as to how next year's students will be treated, and whether last year's pupils will protest.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said: 'They have gone for the most generous option they could have gone for.

'But the decision results in a whole load of questions about whether other exams were fair – for the people that took exams last year and the ones who will take exams next year.

Anyone who thinks this announcement removes any unfairness is plain wrong. In fact, it introduced new unfairnesses for other people.'

Despite the concerns, government critics lined up to demand a similar about-turn in England.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the Government risked 'robbing a generation of young people of their future' unless the grading system in England was also abandoned.

National Union of Students president Larissa Kennedy agreed 'the UK Government should follow the lead of Scotland by scrapping moderated grades'.

Geoff Barton, leader of the Association of School and College Leaders, said Scotland was now 'out of kilter with the rest of the UK where standardisation is being used'.

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Colleges: ‘The Public Be Damned’

In the 1880s, railroad magnate William Vanderbilt, when asked about possible negative public reaction to his company’s policy regarding express trains, purportedly said: “the public be damned.” If a recent survey of more than 2,700 respondents by a Massachusetts-based think tank (Populace) accurately reflects current public opinion, that is how the American people think colleges and universities regard the general public—people to fleece for resources but otherwise ignore.

More specifically, with findings similar to some other polling, more than half (52%) of those surveyed think higher education “is headed in the wrong direction.” Only a small minority (20%) think it “is headed in the right direction” (the remainder had no definite opinion.) More telling, when asked, “Whose interests do you think American colleges and universities are putting first today?” some two-thirds (67%) responded “their own institutional interests,” while a paltry 9% thought colleges put student interests first and even fewer, 4%, thought colleges attempted to serve “the greater good.” Is this why college enrollments have been falling for nine years?

If the survey is accurate, most people believe colleges are in the business of maximizing their personal welfare rather than the public good, thereby moving “in the wrong direction.” More troubling to me is that I think the public perception is pretty accurate. An old adage attributable to Abraham Lincoln comes to mind: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Universities might nominally be owned by some governmental or privately appointed governing board, but they are in fact controlled increasingly by bureaucracies with little accountability to anyone. University president and senior administrative pay has soared in the last generation, and the senior faculty have job security and light teaching loads so they can often write articles of trivial importance and near zero readership for the Journal of Last Resort. To be a successful president with a long tenure and high pay, previously you merely needed to give the alumni good athletic teams, the faculty job security and good parking, and the students low study obligations with lots of drinking and sex. Now, however, to keep the peace and demonstrate that they are sufficiently attuned to the dominant progressive ideas of the academy, presidents feel they must appease militant campus protesters, spending fortunes to meet their demands and turning a blind eye to such transgressions as harassing those with differing views, or damaging university property.

In short, university leaders have been obsessed with keeping their major internal constituencies reasonably happy at all costs, even though the interests of these constituencies are often radically at odds with the views of the people financing higher education: taxpayers, major donors, even to some extent the parents of students. Presidents have engaged in increasingly unbelievable obfuscatory rhetoric trying to placate four P’s: politicians, parents, philanthropists and the public. It is no longer working. Many persons would probably hesitate before buying a used car from a university president.

Now universities are in trouble. To win renewed public favor (and hence financial support), they need to pay far more attention to the external constituencies that provide their daily bread, and accept the fact that, borrowing from John Donne, they are not “an island entire of itself.” Changing one word in something Donne wrote nearly 400 years ago: “every university is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Specifically, what should universities start to do? They need to drastically cut costs and fees. Key to this is firing many expensive bureaucrats and consultants who neither teach nor do research: colleges should aim to nearly restore the ratio of teachers to “support staff” we had in 1975. They need to show strong support for intellectual diversity and free expression (instead of relentlessly promoting progressive thoughts that many writing checks to colleges do not like). They need to meet national economic needs instead of excessively promoting ideologically oriented dogma. They need to return to the basics: instructing students rigorously and seriously, preparing them for both a vocational future and responsible citizenship, while continuing to expand the frontiers of knowledge through high quality research.

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These Florida Counties Are Feeling the Heat From DeSantis to Reopen Schools

On Tuesday morning, school board members in Hendry County, Florida, logged onto their computers for a virtual “emergency” session about the upcoming school year. For some teachers watching, the meeting amounted to a disturbing surprise.

The week prior, the county school board had approved a plan that would require students learn virtually until the county’s coronavirus case positivity rate dropped below 10 percent for at least 10 consecutive days. Hendry County, an area 65 miles east of Fort Myers with a population of 42,000, currently has one of the highest infection rates (4.2 percent) in all of southwestern Florida. Multiple teachers in the county told The Daily Beast they’d viewed the decision to hold off on sending kids back to the classroom as a safe choice.

But on Tuesday, Superintendent Paul Puletti delivered a major announcement: The county had, over the weekend and within the course of just a few days, decided to reverse course. As of Tuesday morning, Hendry County planned to reopen schools on August 31 for those students who choose to return to the classroom. The county is also offering students the chance to continue learning virtually with county public school teachers or through an outside educational service.

The change in policy came as Gov. Ron Desantis (R-FL)—along with senior officials in the state’s Department of Education—continue to press counties to reopen schools fully for the fall semester, including those experiencing significant upticks in coronavirus cases. DeSantis, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has been viewed inside the top echelons of the administration, including within the president’s coronavirus task force, as leading the way on the school reopening issue. On several private phone calls with the nation’s governors, Vice President Mike Pence has praised DeSantis for his work in containing the virus and flattening the curve, even as cases and deaths have piled up in the state. Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force coordinator, too, has highlighted DeSantis’ efforts in recent weeks to stop the spread.

But on Monday, Florida recorded a record number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations—as well as record COVID-19-related deaths on Tuesday. And the total number of cases in children under the age of 17 has increased by 137 percent in the last four weeks.

Against such a disturbing epidemiological backdrop, state mandates to reopen schools have been viewed by some officials in counties such as Hendry and Hillsborough County as too restrictive—and have forced administrators such as Puletti to roll the dice.

“I made the choice because I didn’t want to risk losing funding for this district,” Puletti, who is set to retire in November, told The Daily Beast. “It’s all very stressful.”

The decision to reopen schools in Hendry County, announced during the board meeting Tuesday morning by Puletti, came after the superintendent spoke with senior officials in the state Department of Education over the weekend. Puletti told The Daily Beast that following a school board meeting August 4, in which members voted to extend virtual learning until further notice, he called the department “immediately” to inform the state about the decision. The state was not willing to allow the county to delay in-person learning, Puletti said, even with the increasing case numbers in the county.

“I told them we needed to amend our working plan to do this,” Puletti said, referring to the plan to implement virtual learning. “I explained it and I was sort of walking around the brick-and mortar-mandate. I was hoping that I could walk around it. They basically said the bottom line is the commissioner of education had made the decision to have brick-and-mortar schools open by the end of August and we needed to follow that order.” (Brick-and-mortar schools are schools that offer in-person learning as opposed to virtual learning.)

In the beginning of July, Florida’s Department of Education issued an executive order requiring brick-and-mortar schools to open classrooms by August 31. Since the issuing of that order, the state has shown some flexibility, allowing schools to reopen first online before switching to in-person learning by the end of the month. Hendry County will offer students virtual learning starting August 24 and brick-and-mortar by August 31.

A senior official at the state Department of Education who spoke with The Daily Beast would not comment on deliberations between Puletti and the department, but said Hendry County had not submitted an “official plan” until Monday. That plan included the proposal to reopen schools on August 31, the official said. The governor’s office and the state’s Department of Health did not return requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Hendry County Department of Health Department said the office worked with Hendry County Emergency Management to provide masks for schools.

Puletti repeatedly mentioned during the school board meeting Tuesday morning the possibility that the county will have to shut down schools completely if students begin to test positive for the coronavirus. Puletti said a handful of teachers in the county over the last two weeks have reported coming into contact with an individual with COVID-19 or have asked for leave because they are experiencing symptoms.

“The problem with all this back and forth is that it really doesn’t give teachers the time to plan properly,” said one Hendry School elementary school teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely about the matter. “Now we have to completely change how we teach. But there’s also a ton of risk to going back to school right now. Our county numbers are extremely high and those don’t go away overnight or in two weeks.”

Hendry County was not the only region in Florida to tussle with state leaders over virtual learning. In Hillsborough County, in Central Florida, the school board voted to change the district’s reopening plan that had been approved by the state so that only online learning would be available for the first four weeks of the school year.

Since then, the state has inquired with the county about its decision to go virtual, sending the school board a letter requesting more information. And on Monday, Governor DeSantis and Richard Corcoron, his education commissioner, traveled to Hillsborough County to press the county to reopen classrooms.

“Some of this stuff is just not debatable anymore,” DeSantis said at a roundtable at Winthrop College Prep Academy in Riverview, according to Politico. “We’re going in a good direction in this area and that’s just the reality.”

Cocoran informed Davis the move was in violation of the state’s order to reopen campuses and that the Hillsborough public schools district was risking possible loss of state funding; as much as $23 million, according to The Tampa Bay Times. Cocoran’s office did not return messages seeking comment for this story.

Hillsborough school district spokeswoman Tanya Arja said Addis was not available for interviews, but late Monday, she issued a press statement addressing Cocoran’s comments. It read: “Our district explicitly followed the state’s executive order. The order provides school districts the option of not opening brick and mortar “subject to advise or orders of the Florida Department of Health, (or) local departments of health”. Last Thursday, our School Board made an informed decision after hearing from the local public health authority and local infectious disease experts. The panel was asked if we should open our doors and not one medical professional could recommend opening today. The state’s order goes on to say the day-to-day decision to open or close a school always rests locally.”

David Pogorilich, a 60-year-old father of a student at Brooks DeBartolo Collegiate High School in Tampa, was among those parents who wanted the Hillsborough school board to follow Cocoran’s executive order.

In a phone interview with The Daily Beast, Pogorilich said switching to virtual classes for the first four weeks so close to the start of the school year was probably the wrong approach. “It ignored the state and it ignored the parents,” Pogorilich said. “The biggest mistake they made was to fly in the face of the governor and ignore their constituency. They did a poll and a good percentage wanted kids to go back to class.”

Pogorilich, who is a former city council member representing Temple Terrace in Hillsborough, said parents and their children should be allowed to decide the best option for them. His daughter, a 17-year-old starting her senior year, definitely wants to go back to class, he said.

“She has been part of the conversation and we agreed that the school is taking proper precautions that kids will stay safe. The best way to learn is in the classroom. They need the interaction, the face-to-face time with teachers and being able to ask questions, especially her senior year. We don’t want her education to be short-changed.”

His teen also doesn’t want to miss out on the experience of enjoying her final year in high school, Pogorilich said. “If she was five-years-old, obviously it would be a different conversation,” he said. “But my niece graduated last year. She was short-changed. They didn’t have a prom. They didn’t have a graduation and she got her diploma in the mail.”

Damaris Allen, a 42-year-old mom whose two teens attend H.B. Plant High School in Tampa, said she also prefers her kids go back into brick-and-mortar learning, but doesn’t believe the district should reopen schools this month. “Neither of my kids want to go back to school,” she said. “They just want to do e-learning. They are pretty aware of what is going on in the world. They understand that increased exposure means increased risks.”

Allen, who works as a public education advocate, said her fear was rushing back to reopen schools would lead to closing them down again quickly if an outbreak occurs. “My kids are really fortunate they attend a school with a ton of resources,” she said. “But even on a good day, our school can’t keep enough soap in the bathrooms. The state has asked us to send kids back to school without giving us the funding to send them back safely.”

She also claimed Hillsborough County Public Schools did not have the necessary funding to provide soap, hand sanitizers, wipes and masks to more than 200,000 students on a daily basis.

“I definitely think the school board made a wise decision,” Allen said. “Given our positivity rate, it isn’t safe to reopen schools. It’s in the best interest of our students, our educators and our whole community to start with e-learning and evaluate as time goes on to see if our numbers do fall.”

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