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Trunkage

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Here is a full on discussion of CRT. Full on as is terminology focused, melding different theories together and a bit up its own ass .
Much of it is overblown, as in, not everything is as bad as they say. But their critic on Sowell is spot on. And the more we know how Reagan demanded blacks on TV being shown only in a certain light, the better

 
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tstorm823

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Honestly, I struggle to support McWhorter's viewpoint. There are measures in that document with obvious aim at improving black pupils' interest in maths, and certain pedagogic concepts, some of which are well established.
And then there are things like "intentionally integrate physical movement into math class". What the hell does that mean?

Ultimately, caring about a guide like that is a waste of time. There's an offensively circular logic to it, evident in their definition of white supremacy, which includes in it the belief that "ideas of white people are superior to the ideas of people of color". Ideas being a thing without race, anyone can take on any idea. In a majority white society, if every teacher took on all of these suggestions, they would then be the ideas of white people, and indoctrinating non-white children with them would become white supremacy.

Critical theories have a bad habit (the purpose) of seeing all things as done for the benefit of those in power. In CRT, if a practice hurts black people, it's explicitly to help white people, but also if a practice seeks to help black people, it's also explicitly to help white people. The only way to be anti-racist is to oppose society as a whole, hence an apparently ethnocentric model of mathematics requires teaching how to "challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist views", which you can do by "eliminating references to money" in word problems.

I know you never want to be on the side of the craaaazy right-wingers, but "solve racism by not teaching children how to use money in math class" is not a well-established pedagogic concept.
 
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Seanchaidh

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Critical theories have a bad habit (the purpose) of seeing all things as done for the benefit of those in power.
This is just rational choice theory in situations where power exists.
 

tstorm823

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This is just rational choice theory in situations where power exists.
Believe it or not, people do not act exclusively in their own self-interest. Your treatment of capitalism as social-Darwinism is telling of how much you hate people.
 

Hawki

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I had a quick look through that document McWhorter is criticising, which interested me as it is about education.

Honestly, I struggle to support McWhorter's viewpoint. There are measures in that document with obvious aim at improving black pupils' interest in maths, and certain pedagogic concepts, some of which are well established. I think there is an element of validity in questioning whether a lot of the pedagogic ideas will effectively combat racism, which is perhaps the best line of criticism: I don't see how they would at face value myself either, but it is perhaps defended by one of the sources cited by the document. Unfortunately, instead I feel McWhorter decides to shoot straw men in a barrel.
I read through the whole thing.

If we take the document as a statement that students will learn maths in different ways, then yes, that's true. For instance, it draws attention to the fact that some students will prefer to work in groups rather than alone. But that isn't what the document is about. It starts off with the broadest definition of white supremacy as possible (including, but not limited to, "worship of the written word," which I'm sure will come as a surprise for every other culture on Earth that developed writing systems long before Europe did), and ends with your social justice linguo such as "This reinforces notions of either/or thinking because math is only seen as useful when it is in a particular context. However, this can result in using mathematics to uphold capitalist and imperialist ways of being and understandings
of the world. However, this can result in using mathematics to uphold capitalist and imperialist ways of being and understandings of the world." Because, again, math has NEVER been used in a purely abstract form, and was NEVER used before the development of capitalism, and imperialism of course ISN'T a practice as old as civilization.

It's one thing to suggest that there's different ways to teach maths, and be responsive to students' need, but it's another to racialize it. Who knew that places like China, India, and Arabia were drenched with white supremacy? I mean, going by an OECD report in 2015, here's the top 'mathamatical countries' in the world:

1. Singapore
2. Hong Kong
3. South Korea
4. Japan (tie)
4. Taiwan (tie)
6. Finland
7. Estonia
8. Switzerland
9. Netherlands
10. Canada

So...apparently the white supremacists of the world are Asian, and the European white supremacists are those who, apart from Canada, have had nothing to do with actual white supremacy. Huh. 0_0

Really, looking through the thing, it's drenched with the SoJus linguo that might sound woke, but is unlikely to actually help in the classroom.

For instance, take the argument that the "right" answer is favoured over understanding of concepts and reasoning. This is portrayed by McWhorter as "precision" or "doing the math" (as he calls it) being considered racist by this document, as if blacks can't or shouldn't have to do it. But hang on - what happens if someone understands the concepts and applies the right reasoning to a problem? Surely they get the right answer, don't they?
Most of the time, yes. You might have some confusion as to whether you're using certain methods (e.g. BODMAS vs. PODMAS), but maths tends to have pretty exact answers. It's far easier to evaluate maths then something like English.

So what's going on here? Let's imagine a maths problem where a student has to solve a mathematical problem. The student does everything right except accidentally flubbing a decimal point. We could just give them zero for a wrong answer. But we could also give them 50%, 75%, 90% of the marks available for the bits they got right, even if the final answer was wrong. So, maybe we can see things the documents' authors might mean when they say there is too much emphasis on a "right" answer: we're not giving credit where credit may be due.
From "lived experience," (another term that wound its way into the document), I can attest that when I did maths, we could gain or lose marks depending on what you show. Like, if I had to answer, "what's 9.3 + 6.2?", I would have to show my working (one mark), get the answer right (one mark), and might lose half a mark if I wrote 155 rather than 15.5). Again, though, not sure what that has to do with ethnicity. I mean, I can attest that I noticed two things in school. First, people of Chinese heritage tended to do better, on average, than Euro-Australians. The second, those kids studied like hell. This is of course generalizing, plenty of exceptions, including in my own personal circle of friends, but there's an emphasis on academic excellence in East Asian culture that isn't really found in the West. That explains why people of such heritage tend to knock it out of the park in academic fields. There was a joke I recently heard from an Asian Australian who stated that (paraphrased) "we have three courses in life - be a lawyer, be a doctor, or be disowned." And, well, when people claim Google has a "white supremacist" culture, despite the most common surname in Google being Singh, then you get some really weird mental contortions.
 

Hawki

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Likewise the idea of memorisation versus understanding. A pupil can theoretically memorise the entire 12 times table whilst having no idea how to multiply. So perhaps in a test of ten simple multiplication questions, the pupil that memorises well but understands nothing outscores a student with a decent, albeit flawed, understanding of multiplication. Thus in these two cases, the ways the maths is being assessed is not necessarily getting the most accurate picture of the students' capabilities.

So yes, I can see that McWhorter might be skeptical about how some of the principles this document solve racism. But he's also fundamentally attacking perfectly reasonable pedagogic concepts as if they are faulty, in the process of a criticism that is somewhat dishonest. For the documents' itself, it clearly is as far as I can see a mixture of advice that directly attempts to tackle possible racism in the classroom, and general pedagogic practice. Perhaps it does conflate the two misleadingly.
Again, I agree with you on the individual level - students will learn in different ways, and memorizing times tables doesn't actually get you that far (I can attest to that) versus learning how to actually multiply (though it can probably help - understand base ten, so if I'm asked what's 12X13, I'd usually jump immediately to 120, then add 36, to get 156). What this has to do with racism or "white supremacy" though, I have no idea. So when McWhorter asks "what about the math?", he's raising a good point.

This isn't even an isolated case - I've read various instances of advanced maths courses being cut in the name of equity.
 

Schadrach

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If you haven't been paying attention, a law like that means that any Karen who gets mad when you point out that the Confederacy had slavery as a cornerstone of its existence gets to pull the school system into a long and costly legal battle over how they feel about it.
Under which state's law? Because most of them have given nice narrow lists of what is prohibited, and the only way I could fit "the Confederacy had slavery as a cornerstone of its existence" into violating the ones I've read so far would be if I tried to argue that the Confederacy was correct - that black people were an inferior breed and it was proper to subject them to slavery.

Now, Karen being wrong doesn't change that she can pull the school system into a long and costly legal battle, but she doesn't need this law to do so - she can pull the school system into a long and costly legal battle over almost literally anything.

Now say you have an ethnic population that, by and large, lives in densely populated areas with little to no vegetation and large amounts of air and noise pollution.
Is there a chance that said ethnic population might need different teaching methods than more affluent groups less exposed to pollution?
And if a member of said ethnic group with a debuff to their IQ who is also running into those problems that IQ supposedly predicts competes with somebody without those problems and who has many other advantages besides and gets within spitting distance on your "objective" test, isn't that worth a few bonus points?
It sounds a lot more like you should assign said bonus either by origin zip code or by school they came from, rather than by race.

I'm sorry, but then doesn't that behoove you to prove that your loathed woke politics aren't fact?
Tell me why being told you can't tell your students they need to apologize for slavery and Jim Crow because they are white and thus should feel guilt for them if they want full credit in your class is a necessary or proper part of curricula. Or teaching them melanin theory as a factual truth and requiring them to write essays in support of it. Those are examples of 2/3 tenets prohibited by the Idaho anti-CRT bill.

Facts fight facts. Opinions stalemate with other opinions. Woke politics aren't facts? Alright. I'm ready. What do you have to prove that?
I'm not arguing they are incorrect facts, I'm arguing they are opinions and therefore it's inappropriate to teach them as facts. You know, like how you'd respond if someone was trying to teach alt-right politics in schools.

f it were trying to be meritorious, it wouldn't be banning African women for naturally occurring testosterone
I mean, I agree with you that's bullshit. But at least it's not white supremacist bullshit, since those are events that different African women are going to win instead. Just more likely to be Kenyan women than Namibian women as a result.

So what's going on here? Let's imagine a maths problem where a student has to solve a mathematical problem. The student does everything right except accidentally flubbing a decimal point. We could just give them zero for a wrong answer. But we could also give them 50%, 75%, 90% of the marks available for the bits they got right, even if the final answer was wrong. So, maybe we can see things the documents' authors might mean when they say there is too much emphasis on a "right" answer: we're not giving credit where credit may be due.
I can see the argument behind that. But then, wasn't being expected to show your work another of those things that's supposedly a way white supremacy creeps into mathematics, just like being expected to get the right answer?

Logarithms are a mystery to me.
How so? Like, where do they trip you up?

And then there are things like "intentionally integrate physical movement into math class". What the hell does that mean?
I can see it for basic arithmetic, but I have trouble with how one would do it beyond that. It's pretty easy to integrate moving physical things around (including kids themselves) to demonstrate how basic math works in a way that might help children "get it" in an intuitive sense and visualize it. But that starts being harder once you get past the very basics, and I can't give a good answer why doing so would be specifically anti-racist.

Critical theories have a bad habit (the purpose) of seeing all things as done for the benefit of those in power. In CRT, if a practice hurts black people, it's explicitly to help white people, but also if a practice seeks to help black people, it's also explicitly to help white people.
Right up until something hurts the "wrong" group of people, then it's time to bust out the apologetics about how what is allegedly a system designed by X to benefit X and put X above Y sometimes harms X or benefits Y and how that definitely doesn't suggest the maybe the model you're using might not be accurate... I've likened it in the past to epicycles and deferents in astronomy - adjustments made to geocentric astronomical models in order make observations better fit them, instead of just giving in that the geocentric model is a bad model.

Like "the patriarchy hurts men too" or similar to hand wave things like criminal justice stats away in a way you definitely don't if it's not the "oppressor" group that ends up worse off or how Asian folks seem to do under "white supremacy" and why that makes no sense at all given a reasonable definition of white supremacy.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Under which state's law? Because most of them have given nice narrow lists of what is prohibited, and the only way I could fit "the Confederacy had slavery as a cornerstone of its existence" into violating the ones I've read so far would be if I tried to argue that the Confederacy was correct - that black people were an inferior breed and it was proper to subject them to slavery.

Now, Karen being wrong doesn't change that she can pull the school system into a long and costly legal battle, but she doesn't need this law to do so - she can pull the school system into a long and costly legal battle over almost literally anything.

Tell me why being told you can't tell your students they need to apologize for slavery and Jim Crow because they are white and thus should feel guilt for them if they want full credit in your class is a necessary or proper part of curricula.
Because teaching the history or racism in the US is going to make a few kids feel guilty, because kids are like that. Was talking about this with a teen at work. Doesn't mean that they should feel guilty or that they're being taught to feel guilty, but that doesn't matter to Karen.

Most Karen lawsuits get tossed by a judge at the earliest opportunity because they don't have backing. These lawsuits have state backing now, based entirely on a Karen's feelings. And, I mean...there's a reason we call them Karens. I have family who teaches in Idaho. You have no idea the sort of Karens they got.

I mean, I agree with you that's bullshit. But at least it's not white supremacist bullshit, since those are events that different African women are going to win instead. Just more likely to be Kenyan women than Namibian women as a result.
Just because they can't find an excuse to ban every black women from competing doesn't mean that thinning out the competition for bullshit reasons isn't racist.
Like "the patriarchy hurts men too" or similar to hand wave things like criminal justice stats away in a way you definitely don't if it's not the "oppressor" group that ends up worse off or how Asian folks seem to do under "white supremacy" and why that makes no sense at all given a reasonable definition of white supremacy.
"Model Minorities" is a myth
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Believe it or not, people do not act exclusively in their own self-interest. Your treatment of capitalism as social-Darwinism is telling of how much you hate people.
The whole premise of low/no-regulation capitalism is that sane people will act in their own-self interest and that capitalism will reward everybody for doing so.
So I'm glad we agree that that's just social Darwinism and is hateful towards people.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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Little humble-brag there.
I've spent the last few pages arguing it's bullshit.
If IQ scores measure what they pretend to measure, then feeling good or bad about your number is like feeling good or bad about your eye color or shoe size. Aka, you shouldn't feel good or bad about your eye color or shoe size and it's bullshit that society pushes you to.
Only we can prove what color eyes are and what size feet are, but we aren't sure IQ tests measure IQ and it's probably just bullshit to begin with.
 

tstorm823

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The whole premise of low/no-regulation capitalism is that sane people will act in their own-self interest and that capitalism will reward everybody for doing so.
So I'm glad we agree that that's just social Darwinism and is hateful towards people.
That's a premise held by some people. I personally feel, given people are free to use their resources as they see fit, we'll never know if the invisible hand of the market would take care of people because the visible hands of friendly people usually beat it to the punch.
I've spent the last few pages arguing it's bullshit.
But we aren't sure IQ tests measure IQ and it's probably just bullshit to begin with.
IQ tests, like any test, measures the ability to do well on an IQ test, and anything else beyond that is just correlation. That being said, a unch of things do strongly correlate to success on IQ tests, making the quantity something worth knowing and studying, at least on the societal level. I don't think it's worth knowing on a personal level, "my test-taking talent correlates to good job prospects" doesn't really help anyone in their own life, but people studying that correlation and the common causes between those factors can probably use that information to find actual good advice for people.

So long as they don't conclude that the common cause is just skin color, cause that's a load of BS.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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That's a premise held by some people. I personally feel, given people are free to use their resources as they see fit, we'll never know if the invisible hand of the market would take care of people because the visible hands of friendly people usually beat it to the punch.
Those "some people" being most of the economists and politicians in charge of western governments. If private charity worked we wouldn't even need to bother arguing about public charity.

Facts don't care about your feelings.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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It's one thing to suggest that there's different ways to teach maths, and be responsive to students' need, but it's another to racialize it. Who knew that places like China, India, and Arabia were drenched with white supremacy? I mean, going by an OECD report in 2015, here's the top 'mathamatical countries' in the world:

1. Singapore
2. Hong Kong
3. South Korea
4. Japan (tie)
4. Taiwan (tie)
6. Finland
7. Estonia
8. Switzerland
9. Netherlands
10. Canada

So...apparently the white supremacists of the world are Asian, and the European white supremacists are those who, apart from Canada, have had nothing to do with actual white supremacy. Huh. 0_0
Nobody's defining "white supremacy" as "good at math".
How does Singapore teach math? How does Japan teach math? How do the Netherlands teach math?
And how does that differ from the USA's bizarre White Anglo Saxon Protestant Calvinist approach to...basically everything?
I don't know if you know this, but in the USA white supremacists have a long and proud history of hurting themselves as long as they hurt other people worse.

 

Schadrach

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"Model Minorities" is a myth
So, blacks having worse criminal justice stats than whites is clear evidence of white supremacy, Asians having better criminal justice stats than whites is meaningless and should be ignored (like how criminal justice stats look through a gender lens should be ignored). Along with any other stat where a nonwhite group is measured to outperform whites, isn't that convenient!

And yes, I am aware that Asia is a big place, and there are some pretty stark distinctions between individual Asian ethnicities, but when we're painting broad brush racial groups for everyone else it feels strange to only care about doing a fine breakdown for the group that collectively does better than white folks in many measures.

Nobody's defining "white supremacy" as "good at math".
...just being able to arrive at the correct answer or show your work in math.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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Segregation of GENDERS. They were talking about segregation of genders

Do you understand the difference? Like... you know that genders aren't the same as race? Is segregating (or not) of genders at school a woke thing?

I don't even know what FF stance is on this, they are just saying they know about research of the positivity of segregating GENDERS

ALSO, you to have also demanded the segregation of genders, particularly around bathrooms. So why are you even offended by this?

Lastly, I really like to know what this has got to do with you making up stories about MLK to fit your own personal agenda. Or is this just a whataboutism?
Where Anita then went on to also bring up Race too...........
 

Avnger

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Where Anita then went on to also bring up Race too...........
Let's pretend for a second that this is true (and we're pretending because you've proven your relationship with facts is tangential at best often enough), Anita is literally just a random video blogger. Her videos mean nothing in the end beyond her having an opinion and have influence over no one. She's really not famous for anything beyond being the target of sexist harassment.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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Let's pretend for a second that this is true (and we're pretending because you've proven your relationship with facts is tangential at best often enough), Anita is literally just a random video blogger. Her videos literally mean nothing in the end and have influence over no one.
Feminist Frequency said:
@AdiosBarbie
I've actually read many studies that state the opposite, that gender segregated classrooms improve learning (same with race).


I'm sorry when have I proven my relationship with fact to be tangential at best?

Oh right I won't get an answer because you'll drop this line of discussion like so many others when called on it like you have time and time again. Make a false claim (normally about me or some-one else) then never actually address when they prove you wrong.

Also I said woke talking heads. I didn't say people with absolute power. Anita has enough influence to be considered a Woke talking head like Shaun or Hbomberguy who whatever other breadtubers get posted about.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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...just being able to arrive at the correct answer or show your work in math.
The educator's paper you're having a snit-fit about explicitly recommends giving partial credit for showing your work. You're straight up lying now.