Social Justice math nuts

 Power Line:

It is an inconvenient truth that various ethnic groups do not, on average, perform equally well on objective measures of intellectual accomplishment. Mathematics is particularly problematic, in that results are hard to fudge–basically, answers are either right or wrong.

Liberals have responded to this conundrum by dumbing down one discipline after another. Their theory is that if they lower standards far enough, they will arrive at a point where racial and ethnic differences disappear. I doubt that this strategy can ever actually work, but the result in mathematics is especially embarrassing, as the inevitable decline in performance is hard to hide.

But that didn’t deter left-wingers in California, who enacted legislation to turn mathematics into a social justice subject (like everything else). At the Wall Street Journal, Faith Bottum reports:

The California State Board of Education issued on July 12 a new framework for teaching math based on what it calls “updated principles of focus, coherence, and rigor.” The word “updated” is certainly accurate. Not so much “principles,” “focus,” “coherence” or “rigor.” California’s new approach to math is as unfair as it is unserious.

The “framework” runs to around 1,000 pages and is intended to have great influence over the teaching of math for years to come.

The guidelines demand that math teachers be “committed to social justice work” to “equip students with a toolkit and mindset to identify and combat inequities with mathematics”—not with the ability to do math.

The key point, obviously. Emphasis added.

Far more important is teaching students that “mathematics plays a role in the power structures and privileges that exist within our society.”

Mathematics “plays a role” in “power structures and privileges” because ethnic groups do not, on the average, perform equally. How those discrepancies might relate to the number of hours spent doing math homework is a forbidden field of inquiry.

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I was not a math major in college, but I did take several courses that were extremely helpful in my role as a lawyer dealing with finance and disclosure issues.  Dumbing down math is a disservice to students in many ways.  It is also a disservice to people engaged in business and in personal finance. 

See, also:

Teachers' unions trained educators to 'indoctrinate' students with 'radical progressive ideology': Report