By Professor Doom
Once again we have
a professor saying something ridiculous and getting press coverage, but once
again the real detail is being missed:
Now, I’m citing
Fox News above, a widely reviled news source. As per Wikileaks, it is one of
the very few large audience news outlets that shouldn’t be viewed as completely
fraudulent. I concede they’re not very good but they do look good on the curve,
at least. They manage to screw up the news here right away:
“A math professor at Brooklyn College wrote…”
A math professor?
Oh really? The professor being referenced here is Laurie Rubel. Let’s take
a look at what she’s teaching:
Before coming to teach in Brooklyn College's
mathematics education program…
She’s a teacher of math
education. Her Ph.D. is also in Math Education. She publishes in Math
Education. It really, really, drives me nuts that we have these people, these
Educationists, posing as scholars in different fields. I’ve written extensively
of the fraud, and it simply drives me nuts that time and again these people
continue to represent themselves as something they are, most definitely, not.
It’s infuriating.
Ok, just because
she’s been misrepresented here, it may not be her fault (it’s Fox News, after all), and even though her Ph.D.
isn’t in mathematics, I’m still quite willing to hear what she has to say about
mathematics. Of course, she’s not talking about mathematics, she’s talking
about identity politics.
Rubel reportedly recommended that math teachers
use more social justice issues during lessons. Rubel, however, warned that
teaching “social justice” can also be a tool of whiteness if teachers are
ignorant to the experiences of their minority students...
I should point out that this professor has
won some pretty hefty awards for believing in these things. I tend to disagree
with such beliefs, of course, and I want to point out a big difference between
disagreement here as opposed to disagreement in an academic field. It’s always
puzzling when I hear Educationists make these kinds of statements to explain
why “minorities” don’t do well in math class, as though Whiteness is the
problem. China has plenty of people who are not white, and yet do fine in
mathematics, after all.
Anyway, the difference between academics
and Education is I can actually formulate an argument explaining why the
professor is wrong, whereas the Educationist simply just says stuff without
justification. Let’s take an example:
Rubel wrote that math teachers who claim to be
color-blind are not doing the minority students any favors.
Please understand the teacher here is
really addressing fairly basic mathematics, not advanced, esoteric topics she
neither teaches nor researches in.
I’m pretty color blind about “2 + 2 = 4”
and other basic mathematical ideas because none of the mathematics makes an
assumption about the color of the skin of the person making the calculation.
The burden is on her to show me in the definitions where such assumptions
exist, because I know no skin-color-related definitions are in mathematics.
As far as “doing the minority students
any favors” goes, I maintain that mathematics is not under any obligation to do
any students, minority or otherwise, any favors under any circumstances. I
again put the burden on her to show where mathematics makes any such claim.
Now, I grant a Fox News article isn’t
going to show her full arguments, just her (odd) conclusions but as luck would
have it, her whole research paper is online.
This research is published in the Journal
of Urban Mathematics. I’m still scratching my head over the title of this
journal; I know I don’t know all mathematics, but can’t hazard a guess what “urban”
mathematics could be. To the best of my understanding, mathematics is the same
whether you’re in a rural or urban or cosmopolitan setting…even in outer space,
mathematics doesn’t change.
One of my many issues with Education as a
field is how they’ve isolated themselves from academia. Their students don’t
take math courses taught by mathematicians, instead Education students take
Math for Education courses, taught by Education professors. Similarly, they
take Art for Education majors, Chemistry for Education majors, and so on. It’s
bizarre that what are general academic topics for the rest of humanity are
“specialized” for Educationists. Perhaps this weird education is why these
people never consider China in their thinking, since they’re unaware it even
exists?
Now, journals absolutely tend to be
specialized, but I can’t help but suspect this isn’t so much a research journal
as an Identity Politics journal, where any article that simply supports the
narrative (such as the famous Penises Cause Global Warming research) gets publication.
With her paper freely available, I can see
with my own eyes what her arguments are regarding her claims. It’s a 40 page
paper, so it’s good that it starts with a summary:
In this
article, the author synthesizes four equity-directed instructional practices:
standards-based mathematics instruction, complex instruction, culturally
relevant pedagogy (CRP), and teaching mathematics for social justice (TMfSJ).
Oh no, “teaching mathematics for social
justice”? If there was even remote doubt that we’re dealing with a Social
Justice Warrior here, it’s gone in the first sentence.
I
foreground “race” in this literature review because of the significance of
whiteness in the United States in reproducing subordination and widening
society’s opportunity gaps in and through mathematics education…
While the professor does cite her sources
for the above, I’m still puzzled at why the research always forgets about
Asians; many Asian groups have come to this country and done quite well. Again,
this mountain of empirical evidence destroys the “it’s white people’s fault”
narrative, and so is simply ignored. (But if anyone knows an argument or
research explaining it, feel free to comment below.)
More
generally, whiteness tacitly positions White people, their experiences, and
their behaviors as superior…
There are many statements like the above,
and while it is cited, it’s not at all clear what any of this has to do with
mathematics, or student success. In any event, there is extensive discussion
and review of literature before getting to the research, which is statistics
based. I note her sample size is 12 (or “N = 12,” as they say in statistics).
Hey, anyone else remember that “horrible”
Wakefield study relating vaccines and autism? It was considered complete
garbage because of the small sample size. Guess what it was? That’s right, 12.
Such a small sample doesn’t actually destroy a study, it just means it should
be viewed as preliminary. But I digress.
In any event, the vast results of the
statistics here are based on qualitative interpretations of what’s going on in
the classroom. There are, of course, no controls, either. As such, there’s no way to put any stock in
any of the results. You can pretty much get any result you want from this kind
of study, which is little more than a collection of case studies; I’m more than
a little puzzled at the long preamble at the beginning of this research. I
honestly thought something was going to be shown here, but…no dice.
Whiteness
as blinding. Mary and Molly avoided addressing issues of power and social
justice in the content of their mathematics lessons, even though…
Even in the case studies, there’s a theme
here that is unpleasant. Instead of commending teachers for sticking to
mathematics in their mathematics classes, there’s chastisement for not spending
time on social justice. What’s up with that?
Getting back to the point: we as a nation
are pouring huge sums of money into this “research,” and calling it
“mathematical research.” We really need to stop doing that, and seeing as the
main source of that money is the student loan scam, shutting that down would be
a fine place to start.
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