Is asking students to show their work in math problems white supremacy?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

"The idea that there is a single truth–'the Truth'–is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny. The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples."

Holy f***.

[Saruku]

"The idea that there is a single truth–'the Truth'–is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny. The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples."

I have worded this with more nuance, but Western universalism is indeed a cover for white supremacy on a global scale.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

This is Twitter levels of stupid.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Mathematics is a pointless subject to study at the secondary and post-secondary levels, considering calculators and computers exist.

Just sayin'

Mathematics is far more than just calculation.

[John Dule]

"The idea that there is a single truth–'the Truth'–is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny. The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples."

I have worded this with more nuance, but Western universalism is indeed a cover for white supremacy on a global scale.

It's fortunate that most nonwhite people are smarter than you.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

No, the problem is not division, it's square roots, that's why most don't bother being Drs anymore, the Grad schools exams are full of square roots and we don't use square roots or geometry unless you are a Doctor or a Carpenter or Architect

Many go to Nursing school or Law School after college. Square roots isn't long division

[Kingpoleon]

Considering this textbook was not made as a TikTok, we have to consider the possibility that its authors, themselves, are white supremacists.

[S019]

This is one of the dumbest things ever, please tell me how you do math without showing work, someone please enlighten me, or are we just going to cancel Geometry, Algebra II, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus, too?

[treyton209]

"But it's the plight of individual boys and girls, which worries me most. Too often our children don't get the education they need. They education they deserve. And in the inner cities, where our youngsters must have a decent education as they are to have a better future, that opportunity is all to often snatched from them by hard left educational authorities and extremist teachers."

"The children who need to be able to county and multiply are learning anti-racist mathematics, whatever that means."

~Margaret Thatcher

[Bootes Void]

Soft bigotry of low expectations strike again

[Biden Stans Are Cringelords]

I assumed most neolibs supported this stuff. Shocked at this thread.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Unless we're talking about Srinivasa Ramanujan, this seems to imply that non white students are bad at math, which is pretty racist.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I assumed most neolibs supported this stuff. Shocked at this thread.

lmao

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Very embarrassing stuff.

Writing is the de facto way to communicate thought processes and logical progression in problem solving. It's the essence of collaboration in any group and dissemination to a large audience (TikTok is not going to supplant mass-produced or even niche writing outlets). Writing is an effective way of formalizing logic and it's much easier to parse, critique, and improve than speech.  Not teaching children how to do this will put them at a massive disadvantage professionally, at the very least.

"It becomes a crutch for teachers to understand what their students are thinking" - this step is essential for effective teaching. How else is a teacher supposed to guide and reform their technique if they aren't getting any feedback on how their students are approaching a problem?

I've worked in math pedagogy before and I would tell these people to shove it.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Stuff like this makes me mad. I get that schools want to fight racism and what not, but this just takes it way too far, and I would argue it creates racism in a way by creating a problem that doesn’t need to exist. The whole point of school is to teach everyone basic life skills; sometimes in life we will have to show how we did what we did, and other times we won’t. Showing work is a basic life skill.

[OBD]

Alright, which 11 of y'all voted yes? There had better be a damn good explanation for this.

[Conservatopia]

This would have been fantastic for me in my GCSEs.  When I cheated I had to fake a load of incomprehensible mathematical nonsense in terrible handwriting as my "workings".

Now I could have just made a rad TikTok!

"Conservatopia on the decks, find the value of x."

[AGA]

I assumed most neolibs supported this stuff. Shocked at this thread.

You don't know what that word means.

[Sestak]

We need more focus on problem solving,

yes

writing proofs,

Very much yes

and on geometry in general.

...no? Geometry strikes me as rather dead-end beyond the level in which it can be used to teach the general concept of proofwriting. Sure AoPS has a lot of it to cover but a lot of that is because AoPS is intrinsically a site/school with a focus on contest prep; a lot of geometry then falls to just memorizing various different tricks and obscure tools for said contests.

Personally I think the subject that most deserves more exposure in schools is number theory - the basic building blocks are easy enough to understand but of course there is a vast amount of substance available.


Edit: while I'm here, insert generic joke about "not using numbers or letters" = "write everything in TeX"

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

We need more focus on problem solving,

yes

writing proofs,

Very much yes

and on geometry in general.

...no? Geometry strikes me as rather dead-end beyond the level in which it can be used to teach the general concept of proofwriting. Sure AoPS has a lot of it to cover but a lot of that is because AoPS is intrinsically a site/school with a focus on contest prep; a lot of geometry then falls to just memorizing various different tricks and obscure tools for said contests.

Personally I think the subject that most deserves more exposure in schools is number theory - the basic building blocks are easy enough to understand but of course there is a vast amount of substance available.


Edit: while I'm here, insert generic joke about "not using numbers or letters" = "write everything in TeX"

The Joy of T_eX.

[VBM]

The writer of this doesn’t want teachers to force students to show their work because the writer thinks that black students are more likely to cheat, so they would get disproportionately better grades by not having to show their work

[Storebought]

No.

But it is an absolutely terrible way of teaching mathematics -- forcing students to make simple  algebraic manipulations tedious instead of something to be done in head, or at least by rote.

If you want to get kids to reason in mathematics, teach proofs.

[TheReckoning]

The future of the Democratic Party, everyone.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Are people actually pushing this or is this just some crap floating around the internet?

[Kingpoleon]

Are people actually pushing this or is this just some crap floating around the internet?

There’s no way to tell the difference because the idea of absolute truth is white supremacist.