California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class

If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the “mathematics” of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.

This will be the result if a proposed mathematics curriculum framework, which would guide K-12 instruction in the Golden State’s public schools, is approved by California’s Instructional Quality Commission in meetings this week and in August and ratified by the state board of education later this year.

The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” Apparently, that’s also racist.

The framework itself rejects preparing students to take Algebra I in eighth grade, a goal reformers have sought since the 1990s. Students in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan master introductory algebra in eighth grade or even earlier.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-leftists-try-to-cancel-math-class-11621355858

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Publish or Perish Can Become Publish AND Perish

One of the most striking developments in collegiate life since World War II has been the increased emphasis in the academy on publishing and research. Teaching loads until recently were falling, and at the highest ranked schools the senior faculty often teach but one class a semester, with frequent leaves for major research projects.

One of the things quite striking to me is how incomprehensible the typical academic paper sounds today to more than 99% of the population compared with what was the case in say 1925 or 1950. In that earlier period, an educated lay person could, for example, understand the gist of most articles in the American Economic Review with little or no economics; that is not true today. Scholars strive to sound profound and think that using big words or flaunting their knowledge of esoteric technical procedures or statistical techniques makes them somehow better, more educated scholars. Even some professors of English literature, from whom we might expect lyrically beautiful and lucid discourse, often write using pseudo-sophisticated academic drivel incomprehensible to those outside today’s literary cognoscenti.

In the popular press, writers strive to be understood, quoted, and, above all, read by large numbers. In academia, almost the opposite is true. Academics rejoice in their obscurity amongst the broader public. There are exceptions to be sure. Far more people read and ponder my writings for Forbes or the Wall Street Journal than my serious articles in outlets like the Journal of Economic History or Public Choice. I constantly hear from readers “you are one of the few academic economists I can understand.”

Now comes four University of Arizona academics understanding all this who have written a paper for the Journal of Marketing. They analyzed 1,640 papers appearing in marketing journals, concluding that the more abstract and technical papers are less cited in places like Google Scholar than the more straightforward written ones readily understood by readers. They say that academics suffer from a “curse of knowledge,” forgetting non-specialists are often unfamiliar with some terminology or techniques used by highly specialized scholars. If anything, I suspect the problem is worse outside the field of marketing, in many of the humanities, social sciences and, of course, the hard sciences.

Going back several hundred years, the great contributors to advancing our civilization tended to dabble in many disciplines and were not ultra-specialized. Leonardo Da Vinci, when not painting masterpieces like the Mona Lisa, was building putative flying machines or pursuing other quasi-scientific pursuits. Isaac Newton was both a great mathematician AND physicist. Adam Smith wrote an insightful treatise in philosophy before he wrote the first great book in economics.

When I began teaching, professors identified themselves primarily with their university: “I am at Ohio University where I teach economics.” Today, with hyper-specialization, they more likely identify themselves with their profession: “I am an economist,” possibly parenthetically adding “I teach at Ohio University.” The “curse of knowledge” is a consequence of identifying too closely with a narrow group of academics, usually a subset of a broader discipline.

I am not a critic of specialization: indeed, it is a necessary condition for many advances in human knowledge of modern times. At the same time, however, it not only has made communication more difficult because of the language problem identified by the Arizona scholars, but it explains why today’s colleges and universities often cannot agree on what is a “general education,” an indispensable body of knowledge that all college educated persons should possess. In four years, students cannot even have a cursory expertise in all the major areas of knowledge. What is especially vital, and what can be left for a small number of specialists?

Resolving that question often embroils schools in intense controversy, especially since campus influence and resources are thereby impacted. Many schools, rather than fight a civil war, seek compromise: students shall take X number of courses from each of Y number of broad fields of knowledge (i.e., “natural science and mathematics,” “social sciences.”) A few schools have students read “the great books” that influenced our civilization’s development. Some others say, “here’s a menu: take whatever you want as long as you pay your bills.” Variety is the spice of life.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13570&omhide=true

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Asra Nomani: Critical Race Theory Indoctrination in Schools Dehumanizes Asian Families

Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and parent in Fairfax County, Virginia, said she never before experienced the kind of prejudice and discrimination she has encountered over the last year from those pushing critical race theory in her local school district.

In an interview with Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Nomani said she was “horrified” by the months-long “assault on Asian American families” at the county’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, one of the nation’s top-achieving schools, where her son was a senior.

“It just all began with an email in June 2020,” Nomani told host Jan Jekielek. In that email, which was sent to mostly immigrant families, the school’s principal said they need to check their “privileges” in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

“And we were just shocked, because this was a woman who has gone to our Lunar New Year celebrations and our Diwali parties, and she knows that we are families from all across the world,” said Nomani, whose Muslim family immigrated to the United States from India when she was four years old. “They are amazing, amazing families who have endured a lot to get to America, and the fact that our kids go to this school doesn’t put us in this vaulted category of the privilege of society.”

“We were just normal people trying to make ends meet, trying to keep our kids healthy, trying to make sure that they get a good night’s rest. It was like a knife to the heart,” she continued. “I just thought to myself, ‘Wow, like, overnight we just lost our humanity.’ That really made me angry, because that’s not OK.”

The Fairfax County school board, according to Nomani, has since proceeded to introduce a series of changes, such as replacing a so-called “colonial” mascot, dropping the name of Thomas Jefferson, and replacing the race-blind admissions process with race-based lotteries and quotas in an effort to make the demographics of the student population better match that of the county.

“It was racial demographics,” she said. “It was that we didn’t have enough underrepresented minorities, meaning blacks and Hispanics, and we had too many Asians.”

Parents need to be clear that those changes are implemented to indoctrinate young children with critical race theory, Nomani warned, dismissing a narrative that there is no critical race theory outside colleges, where it is only taught from a legal perspective.

“Do you think we’re that stupid? We know that you’re not teaching the pedagogy of critical race theory. What you’re teaching is the end product—that there’s oppressed and oppressors, that we have a hierarchy of suffering, and you have to find yourself on this,” she explained. “It’s propaganda, flat out propaganda.”

“This is not just theory,” she added. “This has now become worksheets in classrooms, where kids literally have to fill out their oppression, where they fit on the oppression scale. They get segregated—can you just imagine? It’s this 21st century and we are now segregating children based on race.”

Nomani, who identifies as a liberal, urged parents, regardless of their political affiliation, to join forces against the indoctrination effort she describes as racist and inhumane.

“This is my liberal community that’s pushing out this racism, and I’m going to really call them out on it, because they’re just doing something that is so wrong and immoral,” she said. “We have to keep as our North Star, whether you’re liberal, conservative, independent, whatever, wherever you are, our North Star of humanity, and to stay focused on that.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/asra-nomani-critical-race-theory-indoctrination-in-schools-dehumanizes-asian-families_3819135.html

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UK: Religious worship in schools may be scrapped and replaced with inclusive assemblies covering 'moral and social' education

Inclusive assemblies to replace compulsory religious worship in English schools will be considered by Parliament.

The Education (Assemblies) Bill proposes to scrap the requirement for daily mandatory collective worship in schools. Instead, assemblies to develop the ‘spiritual, moral, social, and cultural education’ of all pupils would be held.

Ruth Wareham of Humanists UK said required ‘The daily acts of Christian worship is simply not appropriate for the diverse, multi-belief society that the UK is today’.

She added that faith schools, a third of those in England, would not be affected.

The Bill has been tabled by Baroness Burt, vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group (APPHG), with support from Humanists UK.

Humanists UK education campaigns manager, Ruth Wareham, said yesterday: ‘The requirement (…) to carry out daily acts of Christian worship is simply not appropriate for the diverse, multi-belief society that the UK is today.

‘It should be replaced with inclusive assemblies that further all children’s spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development, regardless of their background. We very much hope this Bill will help to make this positive vision a reality.’

She said the Bill would not impact faith schools, which make up around a third of schools in England.

However, it would affect other schools which are mostly Christian by character unless they had a specific ‘determination’, the Times Educational Supplement (TES) reported.

The UK is the only sovereign state in the world to impose worship in all state schools, including those without a religious character.

Schools can apply for an exemption - known as a ‘determination’ - from the requirement for worship to be ‘broadly Christian’ which allows them to carry out worship from a different faith tradition.

However, they are not currently permitted to opt-out of worship altogether.

Last month, Schools Minister Nick Gibb said schools not providing collective worship would be investigated by the Department for Education.

Research from the TES revealed that more than half of primary schools might be at risk of a DfE investigation because they do not undertake a daily act of collective worship.

The Bill is due to have its first reading in the House of Lords on Thursday.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9606651/Religious-worship-schools-scrapped.html

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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