[WASHINGTONTIMES]
Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, education officials are considering applying a social justice paradigm to teaching K-12 mathematics that would erase "White supremacy" from the subject and eliminate gifted classes for students.
Proponents of new math say the way the subject currently is taught is suffused with White supremacy. They say it handicaps some minority students by insisting on what they consider racist concepts — such as arriving at correct answers.
Some academics and conservative thinkers fear that forcing critical race theory into math classes would mark a further retreat from America’s preeminent global position in mathematics and sciences. An influx of foreign scholars has long maintained that advantage.
"Ill-conceived [diversity, equity and inclusion] policies, often informed by CRT, and the declining standards of K-12 math education feed each other in a vicious circle, which is in time going to affect the entire mathematics profession and, more broadly, all STEM disciplines," three mathematicians from Princeton University, New York University and the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a recent piece for the online magazine Persuasion.
California’s Instructional Quality Commission is considering introducing into classrooms across the state a modified version of "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," a curriculum developed by the online tool kit EquitableMath.org that aims to remove cultural bias from education.
The social justice curriculum is "an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, LatinX and Multilingual students in grades 6-8 [and] addresses barriers to math equity," the organization’s mission statement says.
While doing so, it offers "opportunities for ongoing self-reflection as they seek to develop an anti-racist math practice." Teachers in particular are "asked to reflect on their own biases to transform their instructional practice."
