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In July of 2019, I wrote Social Justice Math—Unless And Until We Stop It. I wrote of University of Illinois Professor Rochelle Gutierrez, who said:

‘On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,’

I noted:

As an educator, I consider any attempt at political indoctrination in the place of curriculum professional malpractice and fraud.

The Left, gentle readers, has been working towards this for decades, and circa 2019, they have finally gone public with their true intentions.  Their intentions have nothing to do with actual education.  People who want to engage in leftist indoctrination belong on the streets of Portland, beating innocent people, not in the classroom.

Rod Dreher, at The American Conservative, takes us to Seattle, where the same kind of Luddite lunacy has taken hold:

In the future, historians will look back upon the suicide of our civilization and will see this poison for what it is. In Seattle, the city’s public schools have decided that everything, even mathematics, has to be seen through the lens of oppression and racism. Below are actual screenshots from the guidelines for math education there:

The young people who are going to learn real math are those whose parents can afford to put them in private schools. The public school kids of all races are going to get dumber and dumber … and this is going to compel the wokesters in charge of Human Resources at institutions along life’s way to demand changing standards to fit political goals. Eventually, bridges are going to start falling down. That too will be the fault of Whiteness.

Allow me, gentle readers, to translate a bit of the language in the “K-12 Math Ethnic Studies Framework.”  Mathematics know no ethnicity.  A member of a given culture may have contributed to the sum of mathematical knowledge, but math is not the possession of any given race or skin color.  “Ethnic studies,” is, of course, subterfuge for teaching little or no math, but much leftist political propaganda, such as:

How can we change mathematics from individualistic to collectivist thinking?

This is plainly the language of Communism.  While engineers, mathematicians and other scientists commonly collaborate and check each other’s work—such is the nature of science—learning and applying math is a solitary matter.  Group think and group work do not build the brain and mathematical competence.  The very idea there is such a thing as collectivist math is a perversion not only of mathematics, but learning.  Again, it’s politics driving math, not actual learning, math in the service of the state.

The same is true for “How is math manipulated to allow inequality and oppression to persist.”  This is the idea that white people somehow deny “people of color” access to mathematical knowledge.  They do this by actually demanding they achieve using the same standards as white and Asian people, using the same methods, materials and time limitations.  The point of this is that math instruction for people of color must be altered to embrace and reflect their unique cultural perspectives.  If not, it is “inauthentic,” and a tool of oppression.  In other words, people of color cannot be expected to perform on the same level and to the same standards as white and Asian people.  Achievement must be equalized, and so the parameters must be changed to provide the same outcomes.  This is know as “equity” or “equality.”

Can you suggest resolution to oppressive mathematical practices?

See the previous paragraph.

Math, and most of the other sciences, abide no politics.  The calculations that produce a bridge are either sound or they are not.  If they are not, there will be consequences of blood and lives.  Numbers know no politics, but they may be contorted in the pursuit of political purity.  That’s what Dreher is writing about, and surprise, surprise, Rochelle Gutierrez is also involved:

Rochelle Gutierrez

Are there any officials in the Democratic Party with the courage to stand up to this? How is it that the people of Seattle, of all places, support this ideologized education? This represents a total corruption of standards. Rochelle Gutierrez is an award-winning professor of education at University of Illinois, and an advocate for the idea that mathematics is deformed by Whiteness. Check out one of her videos here. In it, at one point she says that refusing to politicize math instruction is ‘dehumanizing.’

Translation:  teaching math without turning it into political indoctrination is “dehumanizing.”  In 2017, in Math Madness, I again quoted Guiterrez (she’s been at this awhile):  

Gutierrez stresses that all knowledge is ‘relational,’ asserting that ‘Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.

To which I responded:

Ah. Now I absolutely know her problem: a mathematician who doesn’t think mathematics is objective. Of course, this is common for progressives. Fact and logic tend to expose their ideas, policies and narratives as so much bovine excrement, so they must be rejected in favor of “alternate ways of knowing.” In other words, they get to make things up and declare them reality.

In 2018, in Math Is Hard And Racist, I quoted yet another woke math professor:

 For centuries, mathematics has been used as a dehumanizing tool,’ they write, citing the example of how IQ can be used against people who score in the lower half of the distribution.

To which I replied:

Of course.  IQ is used against such people when they’re denied jobs as engineers, scientists and other professions that rely on absolute accuracy in the application of math. As one born without the math gene, I’ve cleverly compensated by working in fields that don’t require higher math; there are a few. But then again, I’m a white male, so I’m clearly privileged.

It is surely naïve to imagine universities will require math teachers to actually teach math instead of Leftist nonsense.  Leftist nonsense owns American universities.  It’s their reason for being.  More’s the pity.  The rigor of math has been reduced to social justice mush, and unless we can correct this, a future reliant on accurate and objective science–including math–is a grim future indeed.