44 Comments
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Arunsee2's avatar

What could be more unintentionally racist than using racism as an excuse to abandon rigorous mathematics instruction for racial minority students? This idiot is beyond parody.

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Denyse I O'Leary's avatar

Can someone help me understand the reasoning behind this war on math for kids who may have social disadvantages? Math is a great liberator, as everyone knows.

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K Brooker's avatar

Exactly - anyone can do math if they work hard at it.

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Denyse I O'Leary's avatar

Yes, up to a point. But that point is quite enough for the average skilled job. But why can people make a living in education pretending otherwise?

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Toni Airaksinen's avatar

Because the people who pull the funding and grant strings have allowed it to be a "legitimate" topic in helping the poor and underserved.

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Denyse I O'Leary's avatar

Can those people possibly not know that their luxury beliefs are destructive to the futures of the children targeted? I remember a relative in medicine muttering, "In medicine, we try to be as accepting and open-minded as possible but we can't have people giving out medication who do not know where the decimal place should be or why." I am still trying to pin down what motivates people who would close the door on knowledge for children they already believe to be disadvantaged.

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George Shay's avatar

Next time somebody asks me to define woke, I’ll send them a link to this.

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MM's avatar

What a bunch of gobbledygook!

It was the ideological tenet of math being "white dominant culture" that first started to nudge me out of my decades-long "wokeness" and back to classical liberalism. Like, do you not HEAR yourself and what you're saying about black kids' and their intellectual abilities???

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Alan, aka DudeInMinnetonka's avatar

That face and that last name with the LOL built-in 🤦

Gullible comes in so many flavors thanks for the insight, Minnesota Head of education is straight up this alley massive failings resulting 🤷

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David Dunn's avatar

The students at Purdue are overwhelmingly white, with less than 3% black students. The faculty make-up is similarly distributed.

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Cary M. Silverman's avatar

Another reason to end the department of education and break up the teachers union! Math is math!we need to return to a meritocracy. DEI must die!

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Steven's avatar

"These low expectations based on racialized identity markers and other personal biases can manifest in fewer opportunities to engage with ambitious and rigorous mathematics” for students."

Wait... That "might" be a legitimate complaint buried under all the woke BS language. Is he basically arguing that there's a cultural difference in which students get encouraged to try for AP Math, becoming mathletes, etc merely on the basis of their race?

I'm trying to be charitable here and steelman it.

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Robert's avatar

This explanation suffers from the soft bigotry of low expectations. One need only look to Jaime Escalante as a counter example.

The vast majority of racially diverse school districts, like UTLA, Oakland, etc. are filled with racially diverse teachers and administrators. In order to mint even more diverse teachers, recently, districts like Oakland and ultimately the whole of California have been compelled to eliminate the California Basic Skills Examination for Teachers (CBEST).

So, now, California will have a generation of teachers, who cannot do basic math, not being able to teach their kids how to do basic math.

You know where I bet they haven't lowered educational standards? Communist China. They're so smart, they know how to implement the TikTok algorithm to convince Americans to adopt even more DEI, thereby lowering America's ability to compete on the world's stage.

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Steven's avatar

*low expectations based on racialized identity markers" IS soft bigotry of low expectations, worded slightly differently. The explanation didn't suffer from that, it complains about exactly that. At least, that's the more charitable interpretation. I don't often see woke folks complaining about low standards for minorities, but that's what the excerpt suggests to be.

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Robert's avatar

My sincerest apologies! I didn't understand. I don't speak "Woke". I took Spanish in high school.

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Matthew Chapman's avatar

"Whiteness is often represented by low expectations of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students..."

Dude, it's your fellow liberals who have such low expectations of minorities that they're eliminating algebra, tests, homework, grades, SATs, you name it.

It's not about race, it's not about "whiteness". It's you do-gooder lefties.

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David Dunn's avatar

Whenever I see these cretins bemoaning their whiteness, I always wonder why they haven't resigned in the name of diversity, and given up their desirable positions to a deserving person of color.

It's like they have negative self-awareness.

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Carol Lee's avatar

🤣🤣🤣 this is absolutely crazy.

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No name's avatar

Ok, math is unneeded as everything else besides … resistance?

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K Brooker's avatar

No wonder our children are becoming illiterate and unable to do basic math.

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Toni Airaksinen's avatar

I don't think this is the main reason, but it certainly hasn't been found to help very much. As the author explains: if you're a white man, you're dammmed if you do, dammed if you dont.

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Wozza's avatar

He might have a small penis…

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David Dunn's avatar

Might?

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Kathleen Mulac's avatar

Did it ever occur to him that different people have different learning styles and he should focus on that if he sees an issue. He may in fact have lower expectations himself for minority students and his students are aware.

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Toni Airaksinen's avatar

Not sure, you can ask him!

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Nate Sprott's avatar

So thankful for this professor to show how oppressive and racist I have become. 1+1=

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Das Weisse Ferkel's avatar

Unintentionally? There’s no evidence this racism is unintentional, at all.

It is VERY MUCH intentional. The grotesque paternalistic bigotry of zero expectations gives the incompetent leftist (but I repeat myself) a never-ending sense of superiority and purpose they can never achieve thru genuine productivity or benefit provided to his fellow man.

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