By Professor
Doom
It seems every week we learn another thing
is racist, from milk, to showing up on time, or…whatever.
The latest assertion is that mathematics,
the ultimate measure of every civilization, does, in fact, have a racist component
to it. As always I can’t make this stuff up:
There’s been plenty of outrage over this
idiocy, quite justified of course, but the true outrage has been missed by the
smokescreen of stupidity. First, let me present her ludicrous claims by quoting
from the above:
A University of Illinois math professor believes that algebra and geometry perpetuate “white
privilege” because Greek terms give Caucasians unearned credit for the subject.
--emphasis
added, as this needs clarification, being the real outrage here.
Most “college” math is basically algebra.
The word “algebra,” incidentally, comes from Arabic (“al-jabr”), since the
notation we use is based around the notation used in that part of the world
centuries ago.
I can’t help but wonder what Greek terms
she’s referencing here; the English language has stolen so many words from so
many languages that I’m extremely hard pressed to figure which words she says
are racist. In any event, Greece is considered the cradle of European (i.e.,
Western) culture. What of it?
I just can’t wrap my mind around the
concept here. Every culture discovered many of the same basic mathematical
concepts. Pi, for example, has a Greek name, but pretty much every culture
which advanced far enough to put one rock on top of another, from China to the
Mayans, realized it was an important concept, even if we in the west give it a
“Greek” name.
In my decades of mathematical training, I
honestly can’t recall anyone claiming pi was a Caucasian invention.
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as
Whiteness,” she argues with complete sincerity, according to Campus Reform. “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.”
What the actual heck? Does the professor
not know about China? Honest, they teach mathematics there, too…it isn’t any
more a “White” thing than physics, computers, or sanitation (things which also
exist in China, I assure the gentle reader).
She concludes her argument with the claim that
all knowledge is “relational,” or is, in other words, relative. “Things cannot
be known objectively; they must be known subjectively.”
Again, what the actual heck? In terms of
the real world, math is pretty relevant, honest, and even if it was “relative”
it seems to work reliably enough that training our kids in its use is a good
idea.
Stay on
the good side of the Office of Student Retention and Appeasement. Practice
saying "when the student fails, it means the teacher has failed,"
"there are no wrong answers, just different ways of knowing,"
If she honestly believed this garbage
she’s spewing, she should quit her job. I mean, if all knowledge is relative,
if nothing has any value, then she should believe teaching is pointless, and
should quit.
She hasn’t quit, so she’s obviously being
intellectually dishonest, and should be dismissed outright…which is what
everyone (outside of administrators) who’s heard her “arguments” has done.
I really want to hammer down how stupid
her assertion is: she’s stating objectively that there’s no objectivity. If
she’s correct, then she’s wrong. Or, she’s wrong in the first place. Since
she’s wrong either way, her claim is irrelevant.
How can a professor of mathematics make
such a blatant logical error?
A math education
professor at the University of Illinois says the ability to solve geometry and
algebra problems and teaching such subjects perpetuates so-called white
privilege.
--emphasis
added, clarifying one of the big problems in higher education today.
And here, gentle reader, is the real issue. She’s not a math professor,
she’s an Education professor. There is, in fact, a huge world of difference.
When I was at a fake community college, and even at a questionable state
university, I noticed that the “mathematics” positions were being taken over by
Education positions.
“They’re much better teachers” said admin. Wanting to be a better
teacher, I sat in on the classes of Math Education professors, and noticed an
important detail: they didn’t know anything about mathematics. A quick look at the graduate school curriculum for Math
Education reveals the reason why this is so: they don’t learn any math in Math Education
graduate school.
The gentle reader should understand that to get a basic Education
degree, you need not learn any higher than 10th grade mathematics,
if that much (there are special “Math for Education Majors” courses just to avoid the
hard math). From here, if you want to get a graduate level Math Education
degree, you still will not learn
mathematics.
“A differentiable function is
continuous, and a continuous function is differentiable. They mean the same
thing.”
--A Math Educationist teaching
calculus wrong. I don’t expect everyone to know how wrong this is, but it’s
about as bad as a Historian saying in all seriousness that “George Washington
conquered Japan before subduing Stalinist forces in Indonesia.”
“I’ve been teaching it that way for
years,” said the Educationist when I tried to explain that she was wrong…much
like the textbook says explicitly with numerous examples. Note: this was at a
state university, although I certainly saw similar from “Math Education”
teachers at a questionable community college.
After you get that graduate degree in Math Education, you can then
become a mathematics professor. You won’t teach anything in your math courses,
because you cannot possibly do so. You’ll have no choice but to pass all your
students, because any student you fail will complain, rightly, that you’re
incompetent. Such complaints invite scrutiny, which, since you are, actually,
incompetent, you cannot afford.
Admin will love you, support you, promote you, you might even make
department head, because all admin cares about is no student complaints and
100% passing rates.
I’ve seen this.
With my own eyes.
Repeatedly.
Admin is quick to pour praise on the Education professor:
University of Illinois interim Provost John
Wilkin told Fox News that Gutierrez is an established and admired scholar who
has been published in many peer-reviewed publications.
Hmm, she’s published, neat. I’ve shown before that peer review is a
joke, since even a paper asserting that penises cause global warming can pass the peer review process no matter how
idiotic (at best) the arguments.
But that doesn’t mean her research is necessarily bad, of course. Let’s
go to her profile
and see if we can find any of this research. I can’t help but notice that none
of her degrees are even remotely in mathematics. I know, degrees are overrated nowadays, but that worries me.
Her most recent published research is with, and I can’t make this title up, The Journal
of Urban Mathematics Education.
Sadly, it isn’t available to read online, nor is any of her other research; the
titles of her papers indicate that she’s all about identity politics, there’s no
actual mathematics in her work—nor should one expect there be, since she’s not
a mathematics professor. She’s just some person who teaches math at the
university level…for some reason.
How horrible it must be to have children in school being taught
by morons like this.
Administrators are using “Education” as a
joker to cover other college courses now. It’s a big part
of what’s driving down the pay of professors. I certainly can understand why
the gentle reader might not care about lower pay for professors, but allow me
to hammer the issue down:
Administration is lowering professor pay by hiring utterly incompetent,
ignorant, Education teachers to teach courses they know nothing about. Admin
doesn’t care about the fraud here, because the fraud helps them in two ways:
1 ) Lowering teacher pay puts more money into administrative
pockets.
2 ) Incompetent teachers pass everyone and get few
student complaints.
To
summarize, our kids are paying a fortune for their so-called “higher
education,” and it’s being provided not merely in the cheapest possible way,
but in a fraudulent way where they get a bogus education.
And that
is the real outrage revealed yet again, in this case by a pseudo-math professor
spouting idiocy. That this idiocy is published, while
I could get no publisher to consider my books
revealing the immense fraud of higher education, is quite saddening.
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