I dug in a bit and found that and... as progressive as I would like to think I am, I'm 100% confused as to how "focus on getting the 'right' answer" and "independent practice is valued over teamwork" is... 'white supremacy' showing up in math.
HN may not be the place to discuss this, but... am I missing something obvious?
>I'm 100% confused as to how "focus on getting the 'right' answer"
In my opinion, there is a problem here, but it's being expressed wrong. The complaint should be: "focus on getting the right 'answer'", with 'answer' called out, i.e., that writing a number or expression that satisfies the problem setup is the primary goal. But this tends to teach students to take shortcuts when we need to teach fluency in reading and writing mathematical notation, particularly, as I mentioned, basic notation: fractions, parentheses, variables and exponents.
Is this "racist"? Not per se, but it happens within a system where the higher-class students go to schools that have highly qualified teachers and innovative methods (e.g. IB) while the unnecessariat are consigned to schools which have only "proven their worth" through standardized test scores and which teach students to pass the same; what is unfair is that this substandard understanding is mostly taught to the already-disadvantaged.
But the whole site is written like this: the recommendations of the experts have been filtered through seven proxies of PR teams, not all of whom seem to be trying to offer comprehensible and reassuring explanations.
> HN may not be the place to discuss this, but... am I missing something obvious?
The Gates Foundation are likely giving money to these efforts so as to balance out the heavy "learn to code" focus of most other SV-tech educational efforts. It's the anti-white-supremacy equivalent of buying carbon offsets for your dirty energy use.
A number of these things are just good general advice. Others a bit less so.
The explainer on "focus on getting the 'right' answer" (page 65) is actually pretty okay. For example it encourages to "Engage with true problem solving" such as "What are some strategies we can use to engage with this problem?". That seems pretty good to me. It goes on to say that "teaching math isn't just about solving specific problems. It's about helping students understand the deeper mathematical concepts so that they can apply them throughout their lives". Again, this seems fairly on-point to me for middle/high-school math.
People seem to have taken this part in particular a bit out of context and ran with it. They mostly mean "having students than semi-mindlessly solve equations to get the right answer isn't really teaching them all that much about math". I think most here would agree with that.
I find the explainer for "Independent practice is valued over teamwork or collaboration" (page 61) really weird though: "it reinforces individualism and the notion that I’m the only one. This does not give value to collectivism and community understanding, and fosters conditions for competition and individual success". At some earlier point there was also a swipe against "capitalism".
Overall, I found it mostly good with some bad mixed in.
But ... I'm from a region in the Netherlands with a fairly homogeneous white population, and attended a school where almost everyone was white; my class certainly was. I can confidently say my math classes sucked, for quite a number of the reasons listed in that article.
But was this because of "white supremacy culture"? I don't think so. That seems like a really narrow view on things. Sometimes bad teaching is exactly that: bad teaching. Nothing more, nothing less.
I'd initially missed 'explainer' pages - I was clicking what looked like links, but they weren't initially working.
Even after reading some of these pages, things still don't make much sense. If there's a link to 'racism', I'm still not seeing it.
Another weird one was "teachers enculturated in the USA teach math the way they were taught math". But... I was under the impression that we'd been using 'common core' stuff for the past 10+ years, and a big complaint is that teachers can't teach it because it's not how they learned.
Very little of these explainers seem to make any attempt to connect the racism angle, which is disappointing.
As you pointed out, bad teaching can just be bad teaching, and doesn't have to have any other explanation.
A few others I saw:
"Have students create mathematical definitions in their own words in groups, and bring the groups together to co-construct mathematical definitions as a class."
Unless there are agreed-on definitions up front, how would you determine if anyone is correct or not?
"Let’s get into partners and do a thinkpair-share. We will incorporate everyone’s ideas and try to synthesize them."
I had 'group work' 30+ years ago. It sucked. It assumes that everyone even cares, or cares enough at the same level.
"How do I dismantle power structures in the classroom?"
Classroom Activity: Flipped learning, where students teach concepts to other students.
The good things you found in there have nothing to do with race. Also they are well known in math education. It's not like the authors discovered / created those pedagogical insights. They are using those pedagogical insights to push their political agenda.
Since seeing the original comment I have spent the last 2 or 3 hours reading about this. I started on the website and with that document and was confused myself. I also didn't notice the explainers later in the document (the links didn't work for me either).
I watched a webinar linked from the website which covered the material in the document, but the presenters didn't cover a 'what is and what isn't racist in the maths classroom' checklist, rather they showed how to use the document in your teaching/preparation. They did note at the beginning that a level of awareness about antiracism is required, and at the end linked to several sources regarding racism in the curriculum and racism in the math classroom (and beyond).
I had seen a meme recently about 'math is racist' and I didn't get the reference at the time, I'm guessing it's about this foundation. Everybody knows that math is not racist and nobody is claiming it is. The problem is that governments are racist, institutions are racist and classrooms can be racist.
There is a mind view that many people hold which automatically assigns people of colour a lower expectation of academic achievement. The government announces new educational reforms citing statistics that people of colour achieve less academically. These reforms pay for additional teaching time or 'interventions' which amount to a few to a dozen hours of extra teaching which is supposed to achieve something that the five year old was unable to learn in the 36000 hours they've lived so far and 'level the playing field'. Teacher evaluation bars people of colour entry to eighth grade math though they have the grades. Math questions as recent as this decade ask you how many plants of cotton can 400 slaves pick in 120 days or how many slaves can you fit in a slave ship with x and y dimensions.
There is nothing in the brain of people of any race (or gender - maths is sexist too!) that stops them from comprehending mathematics. So why do white boys do math more good? Then go on to earn the good STEM degrees and high-paying STEM jobs disproportionately?
Math focusing on the right answers in the classroom is discouraging for anybody who is already discouraged. Similarly, having a hard time understanding and being afraid not only to get something wrong, but to question the authority can be scary, especially when you are growing up in an environment where questioning some authorities can incite conflict.
As another comment suggested, it is generally good advice for any math teaching. The same goes for teamwork over individual work - being able to explore and approach the problem as a group, and work through it vocally with others as a collective can be encouraging and is also a good opportunity to learn from other perspectives. From the perspective of race, I would agree with the guide which mentions the problems of 'individualisation' in the classroom, how this can lead to competitiveness and further discouragement of those who are struggling.
Most of the principles in the guide seem like best practice to me for any group of young mathematicians. Especially those who do not feel like they can be mathematicians or have any place doing mathematics. Despite its diverse history, success in mathematics in popular culture is associated with white men. That is my view at least, and whether that view has been developed because of my own internal racism or because that is how mathematicians were depicted to me in TV and cinema I don't know.
I think there is a lot to unpack here, I am happy that some discourse on the subject has started here. I am looking forward to learning more about this topic and about myself and those around me and thank the original commenter for bringing it to my attention, though I think they realise themselves that racism in the classroom is a problem which NEEDS to be tackled.
I made a HN account for this so I am sorry if I have missed any commenting conventions. I am on mobile so do not have any citations but would be happy to provide them when I can.
HN is unfortunately the extremely wrong place to discuss this :( Language like that can be used by bad-faith folks here to push the (false and ridiculous) idea that the Equitable Math people don’t care about mathematical rigor or logical reasoning.
The idea is that those attitudes encourage hypercompetitiveness among children and inappropriately reinforce the idea that math grades are a measure of “inherent ability.”
- “Independent practice is valued over teamwork” encourages a classroom where the “best students” come from families who can afford private tutoring
- “focus on getting the right answer” means that teachers don’t get an appropriate sense of where students are actually struggling, and again incentivizes the affluent privately-tutored student who doesn’t have to worry about explaining their answer.
It is not that either of these are inherently “white supremacist,” but they are inherently poor measures of mathematical understanding. The racism connection comes in by the fact that these are measures which can be “juked” by affluence, and that students from rough backgrounds are unfairly penalized. Given that racism in US teachers is also a big problem, it can lead to ugly situations like “Jimmy is dumb at math and can’t do Algebra II” rather than “Jimmy makes a lot of dumb sign errors and needs specific practice.”
In particular: these are (nominally) race-neutral criticisms of US public education with especially acute impact for black students, but also affect white students from tougher backgrounds.
- The link between “Independent practice is valued over teamwork” to "private tutoring" is very weak.
- The link between “focus on getting the right answer” to "private tutoring" is very weak.
- No. Those measures do not particularly unfairly penalize students from rough backgrounds. No matter what other measures you propose, affluent students can benefit more.
- No. Racism in US teachers is not a big problem.
- Focusing on right answers and using standardized tests actually help students from tougher backgrounds. Not the other way around.
Racism in US teachers is in fact a big problem, as is racism among doctors and bankers[1]. And focusing on standardized test scores almost always hurts poor students because it rewards families who can afford private test preparation[2]. These are scientific facts with a great deal of evidence - evidence which is considerably more compelling than “it sounds good to Hacker News.”
You are just wrong. You cannot just make things up because they are ideologically convenient. And I am so sick of having the same zombie arguments with people who are recklessly indifferent to the facts at hand.
> In this sample, we found no significant association between occupation and level of bias (see Table 4). That is, teachers held levels of implicit bias, explicit bias as operationalized using a feel- ing thermometer, and symbolic racism that were not statistically different from the levels of nonteachers. This result persisted through all five models. That is, this lack of relationship held despite controlling for demographic factors (Model 2), educa- tion (Model 3), political preference (Model 4), or all of these characteristics combined (Model 5).
> In conclusion, we have found that teachers’ [anti-Black and pro-White] bias levels are quite similar to those of the larger population. These findings challenge the notion that teachers might be uniquely equipped to instill positive racial attitudes in children or bring about racial justice, instead indicating that teachers need just as much sup- port in contending with their biases as the population at large.
> Researchers, including those who work for the test companies, have known wealth is strongly correlated with outcomes on standardized tests for years. There are several reasons why. Wealthy students attend higher ranked schools within more financially resourced districts. Richer families can afford more tutoring, test prep and enrichment activities. The College Board never claimed that test prep could improve scores until it was available for free online, at which point the evidence of improvement came rolling in. Standardized tests are better proxies for how many opportunities a student has been afforded than they are predictors for students’ potential. Consequently, tests weed out budding low-income students instead of creating equitable access to institutions that help build wealth. This is why many colleges have abandoned using standardized test altogether.
> And focusing on standardized test scores almost always hurts poor students because it rewards families who can afford private test preparation.
All the other measures (extra-curricula, projects, presentations, reports, etc.) benefit richer family much more. Standardized test is the only thing poor students can work hard on without needing much help / resource from parents. The solution in the article [2] you cited is giving money to kids.
> teachers held levels of implicit bias, explicit bias as operationalized using a feel- ing thermometer, and symbolic racism that were not statistically different from the levels of nonteachers.
> In conclusion, we have found that teachers' [anti-Black and pro-White] bias levels are quite similar to those of the larger population.
At least put in the effort to find citations that don't directly admit that the claim you're making is false.
I think that you have missed the point. It is implied in his argument that if the level of racial bias in teachers is no different than in the larger population, then there is a problem with racism in US teachers (as a result of their being a problem with racism in the US).
> if the level of racial bias in teachers is no different than in the larger population, then there is a problem with racism in US teachers (as a result of their being a problem with racism in the US).
And if the level of murder in teachers is no different than in the larger population, then there is a problem with murder in US teachers (as a result of there being a problem with murder in the US).
Even under the grossly unsubstatiated assumption that there is particularly a problem with murder in the US - rather than some specific murderers (or white supremacists, as the case may be) who know perfectly well who they are and will not respond to 'raising awareness' about 'anti-murderism' - presenting that as "Murder by US teachers is in fact a big problem." is at best ridiculous cherry-picking.
Replace "teachers" with "police" and you do get a reasonable argument. In a situation where someone has outsized authority and influence, even a baseline level of <bad thing> is worse than normal. If you're looking to affect outcomes most significantly, reducing "racism" amongst teachers is probably going to be more impactful per $ than reducing it amongst the general population.
> Replace "teachers" with "police" and you do get a reasonable argument.
Not really. I'm fine with a baseline level murder by police (at least to the extent that I'm fine with where that baseline is in the first place, which is admittedly not a given), provided there is also a baseline level of punishment for said murder. The problems with police tend be either that there is a higher level of murder by police than the general population, or that there is a lower degree of punishment for it.
Also, of course, I don't grant that there is a problem with racism in the general population in the first place, since white supremacists and social justice warriors combined are substatially in the minority. You might be able to make a credible case that racial bias is a (minor but worth addressing) problem, but noone's done so lately, and you'd need to start by making it clear that the thing you're talking about is fundamentally distict from a explicit belief that one race is inherently better or worse/more or less valuable than another, as white supremacists and social justice warriors believe.
We aren't talking about simply a baseline level of murders, but murders due to (or influenced by) racism. Even if you're okay with a baseline level of murders by police, whatever that level is, I hope you'd have problems with a distribution where the victims are solely black people (or to be more real-world, where murders of black people are punished less severely and less often, thus giving greater incentive [or equivalently, less disincentive] to kill people of a certain race).
In such a situation, the same "amount" of racism/discrimination/implicit bias has an outsized impact due to who wields it.
The same applies to teachers. If a random person believes that black people are predisposed to academic failure, that's bad sure, but won't negatively affect many black children. If a teacher who teaches black students holds that belief, that will influence how that teacher teaches those students.
> social justice warriors belive
This is a mischaracterization of what anyone I know who would consider themselves a "social justice warrior" believes, so I think at least some of your objection is due to a misrepresentation of the statements being made by these people.
No it doesn’t, the specific point is that racial bias is just as bad among teachers as it is every other profession. I never said teachers were more racist than other people, in fact I very specifically said:
> Racism in US teachers is in fact a big problem, as is racism among doctors and bankers[1].
If you want to argue that racist doctors and bankers aren’t a problem then feel free. But don’t project your problems with reading comprehension onto me.
I dug in a bit and found that and... as progressive as I would like to think I am, I'm 100% confused as to how "focus on getting the 'right' answer" and "independent practice is valued over teamwork" is... 'white supremacy' showing up in math.
HN may not be the place to discuss this, but... am I missing something obvious?