We recently discussed a professor who declared that astrophysics is racist due to its focus on “individualism” and exceptionalism.” These critiques are part of a larger movement alleging that everything from math to meritocracy is racist. The latest controversy centers around a lecture by Luis Leyva, associate professor of mathematics education at Vanderbilt University entitled “Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice.” In other words, math is a racist field of study advancing white male, straight “conforming-to-assigned sex” individuals.Leyva advocates the “re-imagining undergraduate mathematics education with structural disruptions that advance justice for learners marginalized across intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.”
This is part of a growing movement across the country. We previously discussed the view of University of Rhode Island and Director of Graduate Studies of History Erik Loomis that “Science, statistics, and technology are all inherently racist.” Others have agreed with that view, including denouncing math as racist or a “tool of whiteness.” There are also calls for the “decolonization” of math as a field.
Leyva does not address meritocracy, which has been denounced by others. The controversy over meritocracy recently enveloped Virginia high schools after various schools admitted to withholding National Merit awards. Some parents allege that they were told the withholding of the awards was to support efforts toward greater equity in schools.
Various teachers and professors have objected that meritocracy is a tool of white supremacy. For example, Alison Collins, the Vice President of the San Francisco Board of Education, declared meritocracy to be racist even in the selection of students at advanced or gifted programs. As we have previously discussed, this has been a building campaign in academia as educators and others denounce selection based on academic performance through testing. Most cities have such gifted programs or institutions, though we have discussed calls for the elimination of all gifted and talented programs in cities like New York.
I can appreciate the calls for greater efforts to develop math skills and teachers in underrepresented populations. I hope that we are all committed to that goal. That does not require “structural disruptions” as opposed to outreach and supportive programs.
It is the repeated calls to “decolonize” math that are most concerning. Math has always been one of the greatest equalizers, no pun intended. As I discussed earlier, it is a shame to see math treated as a field of privilege when many of us view it as a field of pure intellectual pursuit and bias neutrality. Either the math is there or it is not. The race of the mathematician will not change the outcome.
Math isn’t racist.
Some mathematicians are likely racist, jus like some people in other fields are racist. Similarly, some math teachers are likely racist. It’s important to distinguish here between math (which is not a person) and mathematicians / math teachers (who are people). Leyva is not talking about math itself, but about the teaching of math by people. Lots of mathematicians are not great teachers, just as lots of faculty is other fields are not great teachers — because tenure depends on research productivity and not particularly on teaching skill, and because many faculty have extremely limited preparation for teaching. The belief is that a deep understanding of the subject is sufficient, when it’s just as important to have a deep understanding of students as learners (what’s hard for them, what they understand that can be used as a building block, different routes through the material, etc.)
“Some mathematicians are likely racist.”
So what? Are you suggesting only the woke can be trusted to teach properly?
Many mathematicians are definitely woke and harbor bias against normies. If you don’t believe that, just ask them.
What disruptions would you suggest in that event?
“Are you suggesting only the woke can be trusted to teach properly?”
No.
What a bizarre question.
The Alumni must seriously consider withdrawing all financial support for this University, and its math department in particular……until this professor is shown the err of his ways, or shown the door. Alumni are a key to solving ‘campus lunacies’ we are witnessing for these past many years.
That may influence some smaller “woke” schools, but most have BIG endowments and don’t give a crap what alumni think
Unfortunately true, and the Democrats will prop them up with subsidies. Need to defund the Democrats, too.
Rich alumni are the donors and trustees. If the alumni with influence did not want cranks like this professor on the payroll, cranks like this professor would not be on the payroll.
His ideas are the values the influential alumni want transmitted to the young. He did not slip through the cracks. It’s not an accident. It’s deliberate. There are too many cranks just like this one at other universities for it to be an accident.
Why the high status and influential people want this is the mystery to me. I don’t get.
re Sam “If you’re “marginalized,” then 2+2 means whatever you want it to mean.” Either that or you’re a CPA…
The power grid and infrastructure in this country is in poor shape because it is aging. It was created by the generation who could build a Liberty Ship in less than one week, put a man on the moon and create such things as the SR71 Blackbird using a slide rule. It is reaching critical mass and unless something is drastically done soon, we will all face power interruptions. Will this be the next generation who will repair and rebuild this complicated system?
There is no other way to learn mathematics other than applying copious amounts of glue to one’s chair and sit firmly on it. It is an individual activity requiring discipline and elbow grease.
This line of thinking is bizarre and dangerous. What is racist is creating a world that is hostile to the family unit, where children can be nurtured and encouraged in their home. These activists are destroying the public school system. What? So now a first grader can properly apply a condom and understand how to perform sexual acts on their groomers?
We are living in a backward, warped reality where theft and crime are not punished. Where the lunatics are now in charge. Who continues to vote for them? Those of a reprobate and apathetic mind. Who are the activists? Those who wish to destroy and tear down civilization and this nation.
Thank you Jonathan for an excellent article. Calling for “structural disruptions” to “decolonize” mathematics is a backdoor approach to eliminate ANY consideration of merit in my opinion. In a math problem there is only one correct answer and that answer is completely bias free. I think everyone agrees there should be more effort to promote math skills in underrepresented populations. Certainly no argument there. But I think that Associate Professor Luis Leyva is desperately trying to conflate some other social grievance (or prejudice) that he has with mathematics and he has completely missed the mark. Thank you.
…”and he has completely missed the mark.”
Agree, Skyraider and this is something he should have been able to figure out, since the center mark has EQUIdistant planes reaching the circumference. (That prefix “equi” being the buzzword of the century and should have led him home.)
“Equidistant planes” are parallel. Were you trying to say that the points on the circumference of a circle are equidistant from the center?
I am referring to radii (which are directional planes/line segments with beginning and end points, as in center mark/point A, and any point along the circumference, e.g., points B,C,F,K,S, etc.) –which I very. expressly. stated. (and which may be expressed in a graphic as “the A-C plane,” the “A-F plane”). Also think perpendicular bisectors. Therefore, your “parallel” first statement would be incorrect/inapplicable as an all-inclusive global disposition (Your second statement/question is a proper query.) Love the way you seek out my comments. Thanks anyway.
That is why some of us treat anything that Anonymous writes as dummy text, i.e. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet and skip right over it.
Your original comment made perfect sense to me. It reminded me of a Jesuit in my college days asking in my Philosophy class the following question:
If God is all powerful and all knowing, can God make a square circle?
We were young and full of passion in those days, and argued with gusto for the entire class duration. “Yes”, the Jesuit finally told us, “God can make a square circle but since God authored the rules of geometry, God obeys the rules He wrote”. Brilliant
“I am referring to radii”
But radii are not “equidistant.” They are congruent, and perhaps that’s what you’re trying to say, but don’t remember the correct word. “Equidistant” does not mean “the same length.” “Equidistant” means having a constant distance apart. Parallel lines are equidistant from one another: the distance between them is the same no matter where you measure it (in fact, this is a postulate of Euclidean geometry, known as the Parallel Postulate). Parallel planes are also equidistant from one another. Radii are not a constant distance from one another. However, the radii of a given circle do all have the same length (i.e., are congruent).
“radii (which are directional planes/line segments …”
Radii are not “directional planes.” They are not planes at all.
You’re correct that they’re line segments. All of the radii of a given circle are co-planar (i.e., exist in the same plane).
“may be expressed in a graphic as “the A-C plane,””
Wrong there too. There are infinitely many planes that pass through the line segment AC.
“your “parallel” first statement would be incorrect/inapplicable”
No, it was correct: if planes are equidistant, they are parallel.
Love the way you regularly make false assumptions!
Do you want the last word, as you often seek?
correction: where I said “pass through,” I should have said “contain”
Anon says: “But radii are not “equidistant.”
“… each radius of the circle is equidistant from the center of the circle.” https://www.cuemath.com/radius-formula/
The above at 9:22 is from me (lin). I forgot to enter my name.
I could go on (about one-dimensional planes/hyperplanes/cartesian/ etc. but we are gonna get thrown off here, so
Good night.
Anonymous says (below, at 1:00): “Yes, radii are line segments with endpoints…but no, the words ‘directional plane’ do not belong there, nor is ‘directional plane’ a meaningful mathematical phrase. A plane is 2-dimensional. Line segments are 1-dimensional. Each radius is 1-dimensional, not 2-dimensional. Individual points are considered 0-dimensional.”
Anonymous, ‘is that the best you got?’ —-criticizing my term ‘directional plane’ (used by me as adjectival to ‘line segments’ in my/this sentence, “…which are directional plane line segments with beginning and end points,”)– as “not a meaningful mathematical phrase” ????.
(As far as 1,2,3-dimensional generalizations, a hyperplane (which I mentioned yesterday) is n-1 dimensional by definition; you failed to acknowledge that. Are you just trying to explain your “expertise” with textbook generalities -since I never said anything different about other dimension references?)
Respectfully, I’m done here; Estovir was right about responding to compensatory ego-buoying non-arguments, started by compensatory ego-buoying anonymi.
The statement on that page is wrong. The points on the circle are equidistant from the center, but the word radius is used for two things: (a) the radii of a circle are the line segments with endpoints at the center and on the circle, and (b) the radius of the circle is the distance from the center to the perimeter. The radii (plural — which means that you’re talking about the line segments, not the distance, whereas when it’s used in the singular you have to figure out whether the referent is the distance or a segment) are not “equidistant” from the center; the center is an endpoint of each radius. If you’re instead talking about the radius as the distance, then it’s always used in the singular, since there is a single distance from the center to the perimeter. What he likely meant but didn’t say correctly is that the ***endpoints*** of the radii on the circle are equidistant from the center. Omitting that he’s talking about the endpoints (which are points) rather than the radii themselves (which are line segments) changes the statement from true to false. If I had a Twitter or Facebook account, I’d contact him to alert him to the error.
In fact, that’s not the only mathematical error on that page: he also confuses lines and line segments (where he says “the straight line that connects …,” it should be “line segment”).
You should learn to turn to more reliable math resources.
FWIW, I’ve now found an email address for them (they’re in India), and have sent them a note about correcting the errors on the page.
Anonymous: To the point, your Wikipedia searches fall short. So, I looked up Wikipedia to see where you were getting your information. And guess what I found:
“a direction or plane passing by a given point is said to be vertical if it contains the local gravity direction at that point.[1] Conversely, a direction or plane is said to be horizontal if it is perpendicular to the vertical direction…such as the y-axis in the Cartesian coordinate system.” (Sound familiar to what I referenced last nite?)
If anything, I should change only punctuation/grammar error in my followup comment:
FROM “radii (which are directional planes/line segments with beginning and end points” TO “radii (which are directional plane line segments with beginning and end points.”
That, my friend, is a correct statement. So also (and importantly) is what I said yesterday: A radius has beginning and end points (which it does); ergo, each radius is equidistant from center to circumference (which is precisely what I said in both comments). (you are correct that radii are congruent, however unrelated to my point.)
No more, no less. Thanks anyway.
lin,
“I looked up Wikipedia to see where you were getting your information”
LOL, my info doesn’t come from Wikipedia. I don’t need to look this stuff up; it’s HS math, and I’ve taken doctoral courses in math, though that was decades ago. And when I do need to look up some math, I don’t use WP. I use a reliable mathematical source, such as a good textbook or a webpage from a university with a strong math dept.
“‘radii (which are directional plane line segments with beginning and end points.’ That, my friend, is a correct statement.”
No, it’s not a wholly correct statement. Yes, radii are line segments with endpoints (and both terminal points are referred to as “endpoints,” neither is typically referred to as a “beginning point”), but no, the words “directional plane” do not belong there, nor is “directional plane” a meaningful mathematical phrase. A plane is 2-dimensional. Line segments are 1-dimensional. Each radius is 1-dimensional, not 2-dimensional. Individual points are considered 0-dimensional.
My guess is that what you’re trying to say — but are saying incorrectly — is that all of the radii of a given circle lie in the same plane. That’s a true statement. FWIW, unless you know the plane in which a given circle sits, you have no idea what direction the plane takes (could be vertical, could be horizontal, could be oblique). When talking about an arbitrary circle, the orientation of the plane is not specified.
“each radius is equidistant from center to circumference”
Nope. It’s the points on the circumference — not the radii themselves — that are equidistant from the center. Each radius is a line segment, and its endpoints are points. Each radius, however, also contains infinitely many other points in between the endpoints. The points on the circle — which are endpoints of the radii, but are not the radii themselves — are equidistant from the common radial endpoint at the center of the circle. But the radii themselves — line segments that also contains all of the points in between the endpoints — are not “equidistant,” though they do all have the same length. “Distance” and “length” do not mean the same thing, and the word for two segments of equal length is “congruent.” FWIW, the distance between any two radii is 0, since they all intersect at the center.
For better or worse, mathematics as a field and mathematical terms are quite precise. Small changes can shift a claim from T to F or vice verse. I think you know what you’re trying to say, but you do not understand the correct mathematical way to express it, which is: the points on the circle are equidistant from its center (and if you want to bring radii into it, you can say that the endpoints of the radii on the circumference are equidistant from the common endpoint at the center).
But you’re at least making headway from your original false claim that “the center mark has EQUIdistant planes reaching the circumference”
“In a math problem there is only one correct answer”
Depends on the math problem. Plenty of math problems have more than one correct answer. As an example, there are multiple ways of correctly proving the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (i.e., a polynomial of degree n with complex coefficients — with n greater than or equal to 1 — has n complex roots with possibly multiplicity).
You are correct,. The more accurate point is that in most math there are correct answers and incorrect answers.
Even that is not absolute. As we get more probabilistic there are more and less likely correct answers.
But one thing remains true – there are far far far probably false answers then probably true ones.
We do not need absolute truth to be able to say “this is likely true or many other things that we beleive true is false”
We do not even need absolute truth to say – “that is absolutely false”
If each of us is allowed out own truth – most of our own truths will be false.
This is living proof of the need for two things.1) We need an “affirmative action program” to hire a diversity of viewpoints. 2) Conservative professors need to sue universities for their hiring bias. The university has become the greatest threat to equality and democracy in America
Lots of luck with that.
“. . . advance justice for learners marginalized . . .”
In plain English: If you’re “marginalized,” then 2+2 means whatever you want it to mean. And that bridge will stand, so long as you wish hard enough.
You know a culture’s in trouble when so many of its academics are completely detached from reality.
‘
You truly do like to pretend that people have said things they didn’t say and didn’t imply.
If one hasn’t seen this video already, 2+2=4. It isn’t, its 22.
As the cities do away with Exam Schools for advanced placement students the wealthy that happen to have bright kids will just send them to private schools of excellence which will of course harm the city kids that remain in city schools.
Liberal policies always end up hurting the people they claim to want to help. Soften the criminal codes, harm inner city blacks. Making it easier to let fathers skip out by insisting mothers can go it alone harms poor blacks. Letting poor black kids that aren’t ready for a top school go to a school they are unprepared for ends up harming them as the dropout rate is way too high.
hullbobby: Exactly. For Democrats, it’s the election-to-election optics that count. So they propose ridiculous welfare laws, which Republicans are forced to oppose, just to show their base that if it doesn’t vote for them all hell will break loose. This is a form of extortion, but it’s how Dems have held on to the black vote for decades. Other ethnic groups that are not so dependent on the state are breaking away from the Democrats. Hence the exponential increase in the “diversity” rhetoric. Dems are desperate for new voter niches.
Gio, now we have the SF panel telling blacks that they should get FIVE MILLION DOLLARS EACH for past sins which will cause some to think that they are due such money because they have been trampled on which will raise anger and resentment, especially when they don’t get the FIVE MILLION DOLLARS.
“Cisheteropatriarchal”
“Neologism”: “The invention of new words regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia” (Medical Dictionary)
Who can take those lunatics seriously?
The other lunatics do, and they are everywhere.
“The other lunatics do . . .”
Lunatics do not understand, and do not take seriously, what other lunatics are saying. They merely pretend to. Then they write dissertations, get tenure and government grants on that pretense.
Black Queer Students’ Counter-Stories of Invisibility in Undergraduate STEM as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space
LA Leyva, RT McNeill, BR Balmer, BL Marshall, VE King, ZD Alley
American Educational Research Journal
Volume 59, Issue 5
doi.org/10.3102/00028312221096455
Amusing and largely self-masturbatory with a very unhappy ending
😍
Blacks suffer far more violent crime at the hands of other blacks.
Gay and Lesbian blacks are largely invisible or outright rejected by other blacks
the word Queer is a pejorative to gays and lesbians who remember the insults therein.
White, Brown and Black are strictly phenotypes based on genetic expression of melanin protein, which have as many shades and mixtures of each. Even blacks can be albinos.
Cishetero is what allows humans to be born, procreate and continue the existence of our species
Transhomo are biological aberrations due to their incapacity of reproducing.
Reproducing is the number one goal of all organisms. Without it they cease to exist
Everyone is allowed to their own opinions but not so with facts
Leyva is likely a frustrated queen who is bitter about being a homosexual, and insists everyone recognizes her queenship. Duly noted
If anyone ever doubted the degree to which academia is a thoroughly hard left institution, this example should set them straight. This guy may be good at math, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a nut job. That a university faculty would hire and maintain this yo-yo tells me quite a bit.
“a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice.” In what feverish, agenda-driven, fanatic mind do you concoct such a string of rubbish? These extremists have been so filled with a self-righteous belief in such nincompoopery almost from day one that they rival any islamic jihadist or kamikaze pilot in their zeal to destroy the enemy they have been coached to despise.
I had to replace my roof last fall after experiencing severe wind damage. Called three roofers to provide estimates for its repair. They all came to the property to see how complex the structure is and took some measurements to calculate how many square feet of surface area the roof has. Then they went back to the office to compile a detailed materials list and estimate labor charges.
One roofer confided in me that his estimate may be inferior because when he learned how to do basic geometry the formula for calculating area was simply L x W and that formula did not “advance justice for learners marginalized across intersections of race, gender, and sexuality.”
I rejected him. His understanding that Area = L x W is racist. Obviously.
“True story,” as Biden would say.
I rejected hi m
I would of rejected him because he is too stupid to not understand what he doesnt know.
If your too stupid to not spend 10 minutes on the internet to learn how to figure area of roof, your just too stupid, and there is no help for you.
I dont know everything. But I know where to find the answer.
Math and grammar are hard…
We keep asking why the level of our children’s intelligence and competence, as measured by all our tests, keeps dropping. The reason is very simple: We don’t want them to be well educated. The last thing we want now is for an intellectually and spiritually vigorous generation to confront us with the question of what we have done to this country….
Coincidence? Our hosts chronicles another Higher Education example of intentional student abuse and this is posted over @ Althouse.
An Opinion piece buy Steve Tesich from 1992 “A Government of Lies”
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/01/we-are-rapidly-becoming-prototypes-of.html#more
Who is funding these idiots? Obama was the worst thing to happen to minorities in generations. What a racist moron that guy and his henchmen holder, jarrett, et al are.
I suppose if you agree that math and science are racist, then you never have to prove anything, because then you’d be a racist. So the money keeps flowing and the nation’s rifts keep widening and the poor kids get screwed over worse than ever…well done libs.
Are the Detroit Schools racist? Baltimore? Harare? Where are the kids that thrive outside the influence of whitey?
Who is funding these idiots? Obama was the worst thing to happen to minorities in generations.
Equity has replaced Equality. There is only one way to attain equity. ALL cannot be the valedictorian. The only solution to to force all to the bottom.
Make them all idiots and then Tax all the wealth and spread it out to the rest. (Except for the Gates’s of worlds, they’ll always be rich. And DC swampies)
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
not a coincidence that Uber Rich John Kerry said the quite part out loud at Davos…the solution? money, money, money, money,money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money
(yours not his)
Not surprising. 20 years ago, the trope was school funding was the cause of the “gap.” Idiots like Martin O’Malley in b’more redid the funding schemes so places like b’more would get the same funding as the ‘rich’ districts. 20 years later, b’more schools are still sh!tholes and the surrounding areas are worse.
In the late 80s through the 90s, the KCMO school district was handed a couple billion dollars by a federal judge to overcome and the only number that went up there was the dropout rate.
These leftist boondoggles have got to stop. They are terrible for the poor kids and bad for everyone else.
2010 Mark Zuckerberg gave Corey Booker, and Newark Schools $100 million. It was a colossal failure. The only people helped were the high dollar experts, and consultants. Not a kid was helped.
There is a black educator directing a successful charter school who has said that the easiest way to destroy the charter and its success would be to give it alot more money.
Money rarely solves problems.
But lack of it drives people to find new, better and cheaper solutions.
And that increases our standard of living.
.Many decades ago the NY Times decided to find one variable that correlated best with quality education. Mathematics was the easiest to test so they created a list of variables and then looked to see which variable coincided with the highest mathematics score.
The amount of money spent had the strongest correlation. The winner was one of the Dakotas. The least amount of money spent coincided with the best math skills.
Neal, Iowan2, JohnBsay, and S. Meyer: This is a topic in which I am quite ignorant/uninformed, and it was good to read comments from all four. But is there a breakdown of how $$$$ is allocated/spent in order to assess relative improvement/failure. Do we know?…. Salaries? Updated texts/required reading? Computers for all? Class or school consolidation? “Busing” from inner-city to outlying schools? Block grants for specific programs? Such information, in my mind, would add dimension and credence to respective comments. (But you are all correct: appears like abject failure all around, irrespective of causative factoring.)
On the largest possible scale, Robert Barro – Harvard Economist, IDEAS RESPEC Ranked #4 in the world,
complied a database of government spending. and found that on average for every $1 that government spends $0.25-0.35 in Value is created.
While the norm in all spending including private and govenrment is that for every $1 spent about $1.035 in value is created.
Myriads of studied – in the US, in the past 20 years, 40, years 100 years, 200 years, accorss the OECD, … pretty close to universally.
For every 10% of GDP government spends the rate of increase in standard of living declines by 1%.
This is as an example why the rise of standard of living in Europe is much lower than the US.
I have expressed – and th findings of economist offer these as linear. In all likelyhood they are curves. R&R cound something like that with Government debt about a decade ago – finding that as Debt increases as a percent of GDP growth declines – but that the effect is not linear.
That as an example the effect of debt at 50% of GDP is small, while at 80% of GDP it is very large and over 100% of GDP it is debilitating.
Obama’s Cheif Economic Advisor – Christine Romer did alot of work on Taxes finding the economic impact of various types of taxes.
Taxes on capital formation and investment being the most negative, while consumption taxes has the smallest negative impact – as I recall.
Regardless, she found that the revenue optimizing Maximum for income taxes – especially on high earners was about 35%.
Top marging tax breaks about 35% result in DECREASED government revenue. This is likely why US tax revenues have been near constant for almost a century – because though the scheduled upper margin tax rates have been all over the place – the effective rates after deductions have been close to that 35% revenue optimizing maximum for most of that 100 years.
I would further note that the Revenue optomizing Max is HIGHER that the standard of living optimizing max – which is likely somewhere between 10% and 20%.
I frequently attack Socialism here. Socialism is the predominant form of big government.
Regardless ALL big government fails. Not necescarily identically, but fails nonetheless.
Government is inefficient – in fact we WANT government to be inefficient. Govenrment is FORCE, and we never want FORCE used efficiently.
Governmnt must always be limited to what can not be accomplished without FORCE.
JohnBSay: Interesting reading, but one question. Are you like a walking encyclopedia? Do you dream in words?! Is your bedroom/desk/kitchen table buried in paper(s)?
I can give you my CV – I have lots of experince in many fields,
On occasion I have posted about my own life or life experiences. Mostly though I try not to toot my own horn.
Except where real world experience matters – and I have lots of that, I prefer that facts speak for themselves.
I do not expect others to accept what I have said as true. I expect them to check it out.
but most importantly, when I am not sure, or even when I am sure but want to be very accurate – I check my facts with an internet search.
And of check those of other posters.
Lin, I have no answer, but have seen that dollars don’t equate to a good education..
To provide a partial answer, in NYC the charter schools are paid 25% less than the public schools and reverse the trend even sending kids to college. That probably left a lot of money for profit and to repay start-up costs. They probably also have to spend money to keep the government off their backs.
Thanks, S. Meyer, and that is certainly impressive. I would assume that voters in individual school districts or members of school boards are apprised of what had constituted the best bang for their $bucks. Wouldn’t it have been nice if “doctor” jill biden had done an analysis on this for her dissertation? (rhetorical question, ha ha)
Last I read 50,000 students were refused the randomized acceptance to the charter schools because the teachers unions and Democrat Party are trying to destroy the charter schools which are the best chance for the inner city poor. They won’t let the charter schools grow and they are depriving them of the freedoms that made charter schools work.
They can compare siblings and twins where one was admitted to the charter school and the other wasn’t. The child who won the lottery was far more successful.
Because of politics the left will destroy the lives of tens of thousands of blacks, hispanics, and poor whites in order to maintain power. It is a sin.
Logic is racist too! As is criticism of anyone calling someone or something racist. There! Have I got it covered?
Just goes to show how stupid I am. 5 years of engineering school and I thought math was about numbers. Where do I go to get my money back?
Not just any numbers…Arabic numbers from Africa
Well, technically, math began as a concept on the Greek island of Samos, in the Aegean Sea, and only became a useful tool using Arabic numbers hundreds of years later.
https://cosmolearning.org/documentaries/the-ascent-of-man-bbc/5/
That sounds pretty racist
If you ever took Calculus I and Calculus II, you would come to appreciate that getting the correct answers to exam questions have everything to do with how hard you studied and did countless homework problems. Plenty of whites, straights and cis-whatever failed my Calculus I and II classes. I did alright.
As a white person that failed Calc II the first time, I have to agree (or do I???).
There’s math that preceded the Greeks (e.g., in Mesopotamia).
Depends on how you define math. I’ll differ to Bronowski’s definition, as offered in the first few sentences of the link I provided, since he, himself, was a highly-accomplished mathematician who’d worked wiith John von Neumann, whom many consider to have been the greatest of them all.
Differ should be Defer. I never claimed to be good at spelling.
He describes math as “reasoning with numbers.” But not all of mathematics is about reasoning with numbers. There are significant results in many areas of math (e.g., logic, set theory, geometry) that can be formulated without numbers. For example, the concept of congruence and the question of whether given shapes are congruent can be reasoned about without numbers.
Arabic numbers — sometimes called Hindu-Arabic numbers — originated in India, not Africa.
We all agree that Northern Europeans didn’t start it, that’s all that matters here.
History begins long long long before the western enlightenment.
That does not change the fact that to this point that western enlightenment remains the pinnacle.
Will that be true in 50 years – maybe not. many regions have been at the leading edge for hundreds of years.
At the same time while the leading edge of development moves around, pretty close to universally the next center of human advancement has always Built upon the last.
Western enlightenment values will with near certainty provide the foundation for whatever comes next.
And that is the core to the massive error on the part of the left.
The odds of rejecting western enlighnment, AND also improving are very near zero.
You can improve on the western enlighment, but you are highly unlikely to be able to create something superior by rejecting it nearly in whole and starting over – from where ? The egyptions ? The chinese ? The indians ? and getting a superior result.
Psst – it might be racist to want your money back. 2+2=racism.
Progressives are clowns, laugh at the stupidity.
Yet another idiot professor.. If EVERYTHING is racist, NOTHING is racist. Talk about a race to the bottom!
The professor is correct, math IS a White space, which is why Asians win all the math prizes.
The tell is that Luis Leyva is a professor of math education. The field of education in academia has long been synonymous with indoctrination. This is not to absolve the rest of the academy which is now equally mired in wokery. However, Schools of Education tend to specialize in producing commissars who have overseen the dismantling public education in America.
Asians don’t win all the math prizes or even the majority:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Prize
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvenet_Prize
If one looks at numbers and relative percentages, today, in this country, you will probably be found to be incorrect.
Malcomb Gladwell wrote a book where he refers to 10,000 hours to make a person into a professional. In this country we are not lacking brains. We are lacking the desire to be the best success we can be.