Thursday, August 18, 2022

Don't let 'woke math' ruin your child's education

By Washington Examiner

Students head to the class room after eating breakfast, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, during the first day of school at Washington Elementary School in Riviera Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) - Wilfredo Lee/AP

The Washington Examiner reported last weekend on the depressing fact that millions of dollars have been wasted attempting to shoehorn critical race theory and other " woke " concepts into math curricula, of all places. This means in school districts in which most students can neither read nor do math, race hucksters and charlatans are getting rich teaching them to hate one another because of the color of their skin .

This kind of educational malpractice needs to be purged with fire and the sword. It is the worst of all worlds to waste taxpayer funds on deforming young students' minds. It's a classic case of Why Johnny Can't Read but applied to the extremely dumb and trendy educational theories afflicting schoolchildren today.

Wokeness — whether it comes under the label of "equitable math," "social justice," "critical race theory," or "social and emotional learning" — is not about teaching that racism exists and played an important role in American history. Schools have done that successfully for decades. Rather, it is a hateful and toxic ideology that teaches students to hate and distrust each other because of the color of their skin and nothing more. It has no place in any school curriculum — but least of all in mathematics.

You cannot teach wokeness and math together because they are incompatible. It can never be anything more than a distraction from math to teach children that their country is an incurably racist place, that white people are inherent oppressors, and that there is a ritual intersectional hierarchy of victimhood that must be observed.

Some of these wokeness curricula even disparage concepts essential to math, such as "correct answers," as a function of white supremacy. And no, we are not making this up — these same grifters apply the "white supremacy" label to such obvious virtues as " hard work," "rationality ," punctuality, good grammar, fair-mindedness, and other life habits that every student of every race should be trying to cultivate.

Mathematics is a hard enough subject as it is, from long division all the way through partial differential equations. But math is at least objective. (Yes, "objectivity" is one of those white supremacy concepts, unfortunately.) To muddy this subject with left-wing indoctrination is to mix truth with falsehood. Besides, do you want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believes correct mathematical answers are racist?

The students who have the most to lose from this kind of institutionalized deformation, as always, are poorer and nonwhite students. Critical race theory already damages and disadvantages black students by teaching them that they can never get a fair shot in life, no matter how hard they work, its central teaching being that their white comrades and teachers are racists who hate them and intend to oppress them, which implies that they must live in constant fear and distrust.

In short, critical race theory is an excuse for failing at life — and because of its corrosive effect on real learning in school, it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is here that the educational race grifters find their lunch ticket. As the dilution of these students' education with such propaganda causes the racial achievement gap to widen, they will blame systemic racism, which, in turn, provides further excuses for them to sell books, give extremely lucrative speeches , and draw up critical race theory content, enriching themselves unjustly at the expense of schoolchildren, taxpayers, and civic harmony.

Do not let your school district inflict "woke math" on your children. Make sure they are given a chance to learn useful skills and information, not be indoctrinated by fortune-seeking liars with dumb ideas.