Oregon Pushes Idea That Math Is Racist, Encourages Teachers to Dismantle White Supremacy
“…The Oregon Department of Education is promoting a course for teachers that links math lessons to racism and a culture of “white supremacy.”
The department last week sent out an online pamphlet for a course called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” which includes a section on “Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” The pamphlet includes materials that are essentially a course for spreading wokeness inside of classrooms.
The ODE-promoted course brands itself as “an integrated approach to mathematics that centers Black, Latinx, and Multilingual students in grades 6-8, addresses barriers to math equity, and aligns instruction to grade-level priority standards.” The course challenges the reality that some answers are simply wrong while broadly challenging America’s founding principles.
According to the course syllabus, there are five “strides” that can help educators banish “racism” from math in their classrooms. In the dismantling racism section, the course asks teachers to examine their “actions, beliefs, and values around teaching mathematics” with the apparent goal of shaming them into making lessons about identity politics.
“White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions. Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on [minority] students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics,” the section states.
The course section also identifies “ways in which white supremacy shows up in math classrooms.”
According to the teaching materials, too much focus on asking students to get the “right” answer when solving math problems is connected to white supremacy, as is working independently. The course favors group math work for students…”
