Conservative Reading Comprehension
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2021 6:49 pm
Recently there was an uproar in the conservative echo chamber because the Oregon Department of Education published the following in a newsletter:
Our friends at the Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction are offering a virtual micro-course beginning February 25, 2021, titled “Pathway to Math Equity Micro-Course 2.0: Valuing and elevating student discourse in the math classroom.” The course consists of five synchronous sessions.
In this online course, educators will learn key tools for engagement, develop strategies to improve equitable outcomes for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, and join communities of practice.
Now, one might wonder why conservatives would be upset about educators focusing on helping minorities do better at math. But then you remember the ones who are upset about this are racists; it makes sense that racists wouldn't want to see minorities do better at math and have the career success that leads to. According to the anti-liberal propaganda site “Daily Wire,” “The program’s toolkit also encourages teachers not to focus on a single correct answer, but to “come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem” and to “Challenge standardized test questions by getting the ‘right’ answer, but justify other answers by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.” Distorted by his extreme bigotry, ajax18 imagines this means black liberals are claiming that “Anyone who argues 2+2=4 is a racist.”
Looking at the actual “Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” material (https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/up ... TRIDE1.pdf) , you can see that the Fox News and Daily Wire articles are deliberately misleading, and that ajax18 literally could not be more wrong about this instructional material.
What the material actually says is, “Of course, most math problems have correct answers, but sometimes there can be more than one way to interpret a problem, especially word problems, leading to more than one possible right answer. And 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. Students can arrive at the right answer without grasping the bigger concept; or they can have an “aha” moment when they see why they got an answer wrong. Sometimes a wrong answer sheds more light than a right answer.”
On the same page as the above quote, It suggests for a classroom activity to “Choose problems that have complex, competing, or multiple answers.” In this specific context, it says to, “Come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem.” And to “Challenge standardized test questions by getting the “right” answer, but justify other answers by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.”
The central theme of the material is teaching kids to think rather than simply follow rote algorithms to get the right answer to prepackaged problems. It is crystal clear that the point of this isn’t to give black kid’s A’s and participation points for saying that 2+2=5 because we don’t want to hurt their feelings. The point is to create better math students who will grow up to be better engineers and scientists. While it might be a stretch to call narrow-minded and rote mathematic instruction a manifestation of “white supremacy culture,” the actual suggestions of how to improve teaching math and make it more rigorous are spot-on.
I can’t help but imagine that the people who are upset about this are hicks who don’t have jobs in STEM fields and can’t stand the idea of blacks being more successful at math than they are. Either that, or their bigotry impedes their reading comprehension.
Our friends at the Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction are offering a virtual micro-course beginning February 25, 2021, titled “Pathway to Math Equity Micro-Course 2.0: Valuing and elevating student discourse in the math classroom.” The course consists of five synchronous sessions.
In this online course, educators will learn key tools for engagement, develop strategies to improve equitable outcomes for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, and join communities of practice.
Now, one might wonder why conservatives would be upset about educators focusing on helping minorities do better at math. But then you remember the ones who are upset about this are racists; it makes sense that racists wouldn't want to see minorities do better at math and have the career success that leads to. According to the anti-liberal propaganda site “Daily Wire,” “The program’s toolkit also encourages teachers not to focus on a single correct answer, but to “come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem” and to “Challenge standardized test questions by getting the ‘right’ answer, but justify other answers by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.” Distorted by his extreme bigotry, ajax18 imagines this means black liberals are claiming that “Anyone who argues 2+2=4 is a racist.”
Looking at the actual “Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” material (https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/up ... TRIDE1.pdf) , you can see that the Fox News and Daily Wire articles are deliberately misleading, and that ajax18 literally could not be more wrong about this instructional material.
What the material actually says is, “Of course, most math problems have correct answers, but sometimes there can be more than one way to interpret a problem, especially word problems, leading to more than one possible right answer. And 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. Students can arrive at the right answer without grasping the bigger concept; or they can have an “aha” moment when they see why they got an answer wrong. Sometimes a wrong answer sheds more light than a right answer.”
On the same page as the above quote, It suggests for a classroom activity to “Choose problems that have complex, competing, or multiple answers.” In this specific context, it says to, “Come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem.” And to “Challenge standardized test questions by getting the “right” answer, but justify other answers by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.”
The central theme of the material is teaching kids to think rather than simply follow rote algorithms to get the right answer to prepackaged problems. It is crystal clear that the point of this isn’t to give black kid’s A’s and participation points for saying that 2+2=5 because we don’t want to hurt their feelings. The point is to create better math students who will grow up to be better engineers and scientists. While it might be a stretch to call narrow-minded and rote mathematic instruction a manifestation of “white supremacy culture,” the actual suggestions of how to improve teaching math and make it more rigorous are spot-on.
I can’t help but imagine that the people who are upset about this are hicks who don’t have jobs in STEM fields and can’t stand the idea of blacks being more successful at math than they are. Either that, or their bigotry impedes their reading comprehension.