Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Who knew?

!!!!!!

Al-gebra anyone? An arabic word, used to work an arabic number system, to explore concepts mostly developed in Egypt (Alexandria)?

Greek science we only know because while Christianity spent centuries busily burning every book that wasn't the bible, Muslim societies preserved that ancient knowledge for us and passed it back when we stopped being so destructive?

Seriously, we've got enough real problems with discrimination in the classroom, we don't need people spouting this kind of nonsense in public.


ETA: Pardon my grumpiness, hit me where it hurts as we are dealing with some seriously nonsense proposals to fix access/ equity issues by taking everything away from everybody to make us all equal. 100 page report sounded a heck of a lot like that article.

Basically, she's saying she has earned her math professorship with almost no exposure to math history, so she decided to hook her ignorance to a flagpole and hoist it high.

Re: Greek science preservation - your point is valid, though Eastern and Western Christians deserve some credit, too. http://www.economist.com/node/17722535

Technically a math education professorship

This is part of the reason why we have the current occupant in the White House.

You're going to need to be more specific in your culture/civilization time-frame in order for me to offer meaningful commentary here. Just give me the nearest century, and I'm good.

Actually 'Arabic Numbers' are Indian in origin.

No, Roman Catholics refused to accept knowledge that the Eastern churches kept intact which spread to the West largely after the rampaging Turks (Muslim) conquered Constantinople renaming it Istanbul. Constantinople was basically the Eastern Roman Empire which kept 'Classical Knowledge' very much alive.

But I digress...

Only after crusaders decided to dismember Constantinople in the first place, which effectively marked the beginning of end of the Roman Empire. The "rampaging Turks" conquered a corpse.

Which is why we need to have dates to discuss this. Otherwise, we are talking past each other.

Which is not necessarily bad or unusual for this board.

So much fun can be had unpacking the language here, because when Europeans lay waste to strangers for religion and theft it's called "crusading," but when Arabs do the same thing in the same place, they're "rampaging."

The crusaders rampaged Jerusalem in 1099.

By the time the crusaders decided to disembowel Constantinople, they weren't really strangers.

Some antics. The crusaders rampaged a lot of places filled with strangers between Constantinople and Jerusalem, many of which the Turks rampaged in turn. There's plenty of overlap.

Which is why we need dates here.

Otherwise, everything overlaps everything else and we all get confused as to who is the rampager and who is the rampagee.

You can't play Crusaders and Saracens without dates. That's like playing Cowboys and Indians without guns.

As people here know, I love a good education debate. Yet with this one...

With Thomas Percy having made one of the two major rebuttals to this education person, there isn't much left to say, except, please pour some water on the burning stupid.

She taught me that math is racist.

Armed with this new knowledge, I can now help to transform society in the right direction for the greater good.

It will be a long war, but we will ultimately triumph over mathematics.

[rant]

Actually, I will add something. Her CV boasts three degrees, but none of them could be described as STEM-y. From her CV:

• Rochelle Gutiérrez
• PhD, Education (Curriculum and Instruction)
• M.A., Social Sciences Dissertation title-- Beyond Tracking: How the Beliefs, Practices, and Cultures of High School Mathematics Departments Influence Student Advancement
• STANFORD UNIVERSITY B.A., Human Biology

Don't be fooled by that Human Biology degree kids! I dug into it a bit and it's NOT the same as a degree in regular biology at Stanford. The human biology department has its own genetics course, for example. Students can even take a statistic class designed for education majors!

That B.A. (instead of a B.S.) means that she opted for a "traditional liberal arts degree with a curriculum based across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities."


This is going OT, but seriously, when ignorant types like this woman are taken seriously at major universities (she's a professor at like the University of Illinois) and when Silicon Valley types tell us that don't need to learn stuff because we can just do a web search, I swear that there's movement going to turn us into those grotesque lawnchair denizens from Wall E. Someday, we'll spend our days consuming tera-jumbo Slurpees and watching videos.

And worst of all, the people leading the movement don't even know they're doing that.

[/rant] Back to work.

Don't worry.

There's a standard-issue feedback loop that fixes this problem.

Eventually, we run out of spare energy/educated population capacity to actually extend the stupid any further, or even sustain the stupid at a steady state.

Granted, this results in a severe catastrophic negative outcome for everyone depending on the continuation of the stupid.

But, it definitely solves the problem.

That is the lifestyle that they lead for themselves today, so I'm not sure they understand that it might even be a problem.

I did not read the entire thread, but, when people run out of material for writing books, they then, try to make math about race, it seems. She does not know what the Hindu-Arabic numeral system is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu–Arabic_numeral_system

It is quite possible to be deeply ignorant if one is never taught about it in the textbooks that the elementary schools she went to used. It is also possible to be so ignorant if one is completely lacking in curiosity to do a simple Wiki lookup of what the origin of the number system she uses is. Certainly, no "whiteness" in its origin that I know of.

You do not seem to understand that mathematics is inherently racist.

Read the article referenced at the beginning of this thread again.

It clearly explains the racist nature of mathematics as well as why we need to engage in total war against mathematics itself.

We must win this war.

Ok, I understand. I love math, but since it is inherently racist, I will wage war against all known forms of mathematics

/off to cook dinner without using that racist math in my recipes

PS: Someone should let this professor know that it is OK to be not good at math. It takes all kinds to make the world, whatever floats your boat etc etc.
PS2: It is completely OK to take a stand against math based on the skin color of its origin and you may become a Professor one day who tells other teachers how to teach math.

Oops. Another 5-second internet search has revealed that the Babylonians and the Egyptians were the first ones to estimate pi. Maybe they were really white people in disguise who had infiltrated Babylon.

Uh-oh. That same reference mentions a Chinese mathematician who lived between 429-500 CE. Again, maybe he was a Greek in disguise who happened to speak and write perfect Chinese.

Then there was the Indian guy in the 15th century. Again, obviously an ancient Greek risen from the dead.

Ah, this discussion has been very cathartic! But I do apologize for gross grumpiness leading me to gross generalizations - of course lots of manuscripts were saved by the Byzantines, by western monks, by lots of folks as well as by Islamic leaders. The last is just the one I for which I have seen many random "for instances" over the years. Yay - everybody wins!

For the curious, though Wikipedia is hardly the last word, a quick google found me a brief on one of the examples I've seen before (Aristotle) and a broader outline of everybody's role role (and when, JonLaw!) that seems reasonably useful (though I only got as far as specifically-Greek manuscripts - gotta do some real work today :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_of_Aristotle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Classics
https://www.qdl.qa/en/why-were-so-many-greek-arabic-translators-christians

p.s. and I learned but should have known that "Europeans learned about Indian numerals via Arabs, which is why they were mistakenly called Arabic numerals in the West."

Field report from the northern front of the war on mathematics...

A local school board brought in a mathematics education expert a couple years ago. A superintendent raved and raved about her and told me to check out her work and attend a talk for parents that they were sponsoring. Of course, my first step was to google her credentials and find out that she had a BA which of course I was impressed by (I did later find out that it was a BA in English AND Math which I didn't realize was a thing, I always thought math ∉ BA, I'm now smarter).

My favourite example from her about something teachers could do to help kids love math -

Paraphrasing -
Kids need to not fear numbers. Get them to have fun with numbers. (sure, I'm with you so far) Have them write a poem about their favourite number and how it makes you feel. (oh for &^%#$# sake) She then proceeded to read us a poem about the number 7 and how it made the kid feel. I just pictured my math-loving kids rolling their young eyes and my 2E DS shutting down completely.

Let's turn math class into English class and then kids will love it. Oh wait, except for the kids that hate English class and love math..... Good thing those kids don't exist because EVERYONE hates math right? It is so very scary, how could they not?

Good grief. Here's yet another episode of an educator completely missing the point. Math is a complete abstraction. You shouldn't be feeling anything about numbers except in context.

Seven what?? Dollars left in my bank account? Buxom lasses attending my every whim? Because I feel very differently about those things.

I feel that math, even in it's alleged "complete abstraction" form, is an existential threat to the American Dream.

That's how I *feel* about numbers and math. And when I *feel* something this strongly, I know that I can and must *act*.

I say that we take off and nuke math from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

You're going to need a lot of math to get up into orbit and back down again. Best to just enjoy the show and then freefall. It's the only complete solution.

That's the beauty of my plan.

I am going to use math to destroy itself once and for all!

You are a strange loop.

Beyond history, isn't she missing the fact that if whites (in her culture frame) are seen as better at math, it's because of the systemic issues of racism and poverty that show as an achievement gap across the board (the disparity is not math specific)? And that race as a social construct goes back to around the 1500s-1600s, after the history of maths you all have recounted above?

Deal with racism and poverty, don't just give everyone a pass and decide math shouldn't be required because some people don't think it has value in life (or don't understand where its value lies, much less its potential). Math education is different when taught by teachers (and supported by others) who appreciate its beauty and encourage kids rather than let them fall into the 'math is hard/boring/sucks' trap.

Thank you everyone, I haven't laughed so much in a while. And BONUS I get to rampage algebra (on my bucket list).

And to those of you with serious comments, I get it, and I think that caucasians have been in charge of the history books to the detriment of other races and women for far too long ....spoiler: I am caucasian.

Well, I don't think she is an actual mathematician because she is a so-called "math education" professor. Her audiences should comprise of math-phobic teachers with low level competence in mathematics and an even lower competence in mathematical history. She is just trying to get attention and sell books. Just the fact that she is lumping all minorities together despite the actual exceptional performance of Asian American students is suspect.

So, you agree that math is inherently racist, right?

Or go watch the movie hidden figures?

...So?

I buy your argument that this piece is not based on the work of a bona fide mathematician. But I resent your implication that a B.A. is not a valid degree, or that it nullifies the degree's "STEM-y-ness". I'm also not stoked about the way you've apparently linked this person's possession of a B.A. with her status as an "ignorant person."

(I have a B.A. in physics and my spouse has a B.A. in biochemistry. We both have authorship on published research; he has a graduate degree. My classmates who graduated with me in physics, from our liberal arts college that did not offer a B.S., have gone on to pursue engineering, several PhDs, some PhD/MDs, a PhD/JD...the liberal arts core that defined the "A" in our "B.A." served to enhance the STEM in our education, not to dilute it.)

Anyway the site that hosts this article is suspect, the purpose of the article's author is clearly political in nature, and I think the whole thing is a load of hooey. Read the original source and weigh in on that if you must, but I personally have no intent of making any judgment based only on this absurdly biased piece of "journalism."

I think you misunderstood me. I didn't say that a BA isn't a valid degree. My point was that her degree doesn't qualify her to judge a STEM field because she lacks knowledge of the field. i stand by what I said, with the evidence being the ignorance of her remarks.

Moreover, Stanford does offer a B.S. in biology. The B.A. program she was in is lightweight on science compared to a science B.S. at Stanford. That's just a fact.

A huge problem with educators is that many of them labor under the Dunning-Kruger effect, in that they claim expertise where they simply and manifestly don't have it. Claims about de-emphasizing the number pi or the Pythagorean theorem because they "perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans" is a case in point. Personally, I can't see how someone who understands mathematics, even at a high school level, can make a statement like that with a straight face. Worse, the deep and painful irony is that she didn't even bother to look at the HISTORY.

Good point. Her book is easy to find on Google books. The bits I read are rambling, unfocused, and lack support. Example:




She's using a comic book as a source --- to support a stereotype with no basis in reality? And what does a stereotype have to do with any point she was trying to make? Like I said earlier, someone please throw water on the burning stupid.

MTE = Mathematics teacher educator.

One difference between old and current math textbooks is that the older books would have one-page biographies of great mathematicians, such as Newton, Gauss, and Euler. Highlighting too many Dead White Men is now politically incorrect.

If you want your children to know about famous mathematicians and scientists, you will need to provide your own materials.

Well...restricting biographies to dead white guys would be a gross misrepresentation of the history of mathematics --- which, of course, is the point of this thread.

Various Wikipedia pages list dozens of eminent mathematicians from Egypt, China, India, Persia, Mexico (Maya, etc.), and so on.

IMO, if math books don't have those biographies these days, it's because they're "too boring," not because they'd have to be populated by dead white guys (and a few dead white chicks).

But you have fed nicely into the point of the ignorant person who I quoted above.

A hat tip to the Texas Board of Education and its consistent push to whitewash American education is necessary here. When you're presenting bios of mathematicians, you're teaching history, and there are some pretty alarming trends in how history is being taught: http://www.houstonpress.com/news/5-reasons-the-new-texas-social-studies-textbooks-are-nuts-7573825

The OP article is terrible and stupid, but it didn't emerge in a vacuum. It's a reaction to something very real, that has been going on for a very long time, that is terrible and stupid.

The real solution here is to identify that the Texas Board of Education is unqualified to make decisions, override them with national curriculum standards that are more firmly grounded in reality, and bring a more comprehensive approach to math history that acknowledges the outstanding contributions of the many cultures involved.

Funnily enough, we already have national math standards, so it should be pretty easy to pull off in this specific case. All we have to do is follow the process already in place to amend the standards.

"It won't make any difference."

(Couldn't resist the follow-on movie quote.)

Agreed. The article is pretty terrible and stupid; and after reading the professor's book chapter, I'm of many minds about her eduspeak-laced work -- but my main takeaway is that the underlying premise is sound. There *is* a problem, and whether or not this is the way to address it, it needs addressed.

I've volunteered for five years now teaching math to elementary kids, many of whom already suffer, by second or third grade, under the perception that they're no good at math, or that people like them can't be good at math. Some because they're girls, some because they're from families that struggled in math or whose language and cultural background doesn't make typical word problems and other presentations intuitive. And I've seen that these perceptions get reinforced in so many ways by their parents and their teachers, even by me if I'm not careful.

Given that the professor in question is apparently speaking to math as taught in a dedicated math class -- eg. middle school or higher -- I've no doubt that these biases are deep seated in the students before they get to that level, and therefore require dedicated effort to displace.

Funnily enough, I've noticed that schools -- particularly application-hungry universities -- will count Asian Americans as minorities when calculating the diversity of the student body (especially in promotional materials) but not when the term "minority" is attached to any sort of admissions or financial aid benefit. Hmmm.

Joking aside, however, I agree with Dude and sunnyday that there IS an actual issue at hand here. Quote:
If you don't want students to be negatively judged, then a) actually teach them math, so that there is no gap; and b) make sure the assessment of these skills accurately matches their true mathematical ability. Both these issues involve bias and inequality in our society and schools.
However, it seems to me like this professor is really just making it worse...it almost feels like she's expecting people to be bad at math and accepting it, not challenging them to achieve more.
Just my 2¢.

I think it's called fighting stupid with stupid.

It generally results in an overall increase in stupid.