But Paying Attention Is Hard
Toni Airaksinen pokes a stick at some contrived agonising:
This “intellectual trauma” is, you’ll be shocked to hear, entirely the fault of “whiteness” and “heteromasculinity.”
As we’re in the realm of the excruciatingly woke, the terms violence and trauma are of course misused and deliberately misleading.
The supposed violence and trauma, then, is actually an attempt to excuse rates of classroom misbehaviour among black students.
Throughout the paper in question, the term “brilliance” is deployed no fewer than seventeen times, as if it were some obviously inherent, pre-existing attribute – of students who can’t be arsed to study, who don’t pay attention in class, and whose grades, as a result, leave much to be desired.
Even more frequent is use of the term “whiteness,” an alleged phenomenon on which the paper is premised. Though readers in search of some clear and convincing definition, or some compelling evidence of its existence, may find their hopes dashed. We are, however, assured that “whiteness” is something that gets in the way of black students “maintaining their Blackness.”
And furthermore,
Saturated, you hear. Positively dripping with the stuff.
So, to paraphrase our fretful educators: Among these allegedly downtrodden and traumatised minority students, expectations of promptness and accuracy, of arriving at correct and verifiable answers, and handing work in on time, are alien things. Instead, it seems, we get lots of loud and goofy behaviour. Thereby disrupting attempts to learn by other, more conscientious students.
And which, it has to be said, isn’t entirely flattering of the drama’s supposed victims, or an obvious basis for sympathy, even pretentious sympathy. Nor is it an obvious footing for some sweeping, de-whitened reinvention of how mathematical knowledge might be imparted. All conjured into being at the expense of those more diligent and whose classroom behaviour isn’t selfish and disruptive.
Well, again, if a student doesn’t feel obliged to do the work, to learn, or to hand in said work by a given deadline, like everyone else, and instead spends class time pissing about, loudly, then being unwelcome seems an inevitable consequence of those choices.
And constructing elaborate, question-begging excuses for such behaviour, as if these inadequacies were somehow proof of obscured “brilliance,” things to which one should defer, and actively affirm, doesn’t strike me as a convincing, long-term solution. Indeed, it sounds rather… what’s the word? Oh yes, toxic.
Readers will note how any feelings of incompetence and not being welcome are immediately blamed on external causes, on some ectoplasmic “whiteness,” that Befouler Of All Things. As if such feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with the choices and behaviour, and the personal shortcomings, of the students themselves.
Instead, Dr Jasien and her colleagues expect the teaching of mathematics to be driven by the goal of “healing… intellectual trauma,” by paying “attention to the minds and bodies of students.” The students being, it seems, much less obliged to pay attention to anything beyond themselves.
And so, we’re told that “exclamations” and “cacophony” are “to be both expected and valued.” Because when you picture a maths classroom and people getting to grips with differential equations or vector calculus, the first thing that springs to mind is the word cacophony.
Update, via the comments:
As so, with eye-widening obliviousness, those who claim to champion certain supposedly downtrodden demographics do a disservice to those same demographics.
It’s a pattern we’ve seen before, of course:
Hardness and stiffness. And we can’t have any of that beastliness in the minds of people who may one day be working on projects involving cranes and scaffolding. According to Dr Donna Riley, whose words glow above, academic rigour and the expectation of competence are “exclusionary” and tools of “privilege,” and are unfair to women and minorities, for whom rigour and competence are presumably impossible.
Dr Riley goes on to inform us that engineers need to spend less time doing load-bearing calculations, and more time pondering “radical protest” and “Marxist traditions.” Yes, the design and construction of fighter jets, oil rigs and 1000-tonne tunnelling machines will one day be informed not by careful calculation, or a knowledge of materials and thoroughly tested principles, but by criticality, reflexivity, and “other ways of being.”
Update 2:
Regarding Dr Jasien and her colleagues, Aelfheld adds,
Ah, but, you see, Our Betters will purge the world of bigotry by embracing wholesale the mental habits of the bigot.
I’m reminded, for instance, of assistant professor of art education, Dr Albert Stabler, who regards objections to being assaulted in class as “white supremacist violence” – because objecting to violence is violence now – while excusing a near-continual disruption of lessons as displays of “cultural knowledge” and “kinetic” creativity. A creativity that includes vandalism, punching staff, and forcibly cutting the hair of female teachers.
On grounds that expecting even minimally civilised behaviour is “the overvaluation of white feelings,” and therefore “racist.”
And note that those peddling this worldview, this poisonous counsel, can get quite annoyed when minority students don’t want to play along.
Update 3:
Regarding Dr Jasien’s insistence that the rest of us embrace the value of gratuitous, unending, rather loud background noise, Finno adds,
It’s hard to see the mannered outpourings of Dr Jasien and her colleagues as anything other than a perverse, contrived inversion, in which those inflicting the disruption and “cacophony” on others are to be pampered and indulged, as if they were the victims of their own self-inflicted drama – around whom, all else must be made to revolve. Their selfishness, their disregard for others, is something to be affirmed and championed, it seems.
Because magic blackness.
And this is advanced as obviously desirable, an unassailable course of action. As “social justice.” As if it imposed no cost on others, over and over again. But I suspect that my attempts to master multivariate calculus would be somewhat impaired, or made entirely impossible, by lots of nearby shrieking and general arsing about.
Oh, and see also this, in which Ms Xochitl Gonzalez, a columnist for the Atlantic – and who repeatedly mentions how “minority” and “of colour” she is – is mystified and annoyed by people who don’t appreciate loud hip-hop in a university library. Where other people, better people, are trying to study for exams.
Via CavScoutCoastie.
This blog is kept afloat by the tip jar buttons below.
THE PURPOSE OF AN EDUCATION IS TO DEVELOP NEW SKILLS.
To add to yourself. To go outside yourself. To behave in different ways,
I don’t effing care “who you are” to begin with. You’re supposed to adapt to the subject matter according to the terms of the discipline.
But let’s say these “different ways of knowing” ought to be pursued. Show us what the results are when you do things that way. Produce something besides theory and whining. Demonstrate how your “sense making” contributes to the world in a concrete way.
Seriously, stop whining and make something.
Mine topped 1K at one point, but it’s lower than that now. When people delete their accounts, do they take their likes with them?
Also, the OP blocked me.
ccscientist … I understand your “a demanding job doesn’t leave time” opinion; however, raising children successfully is just as demanding/stressful as many other jobs outside of home.
“Just a housewife” is usually a putdown as if such women are dullards and too unskilled to be out in “the real world”.
At the DA office where I worked there we had a couple of “job sharing” positions where the 4 attorneys, paired up, shared a job per couple. All four were young women and quite diligent and intelligent attorneys … with kids.
It’s a perverse, contrived inversion, in which those inflicting the disruption and “cacophony” on others are to be pampered and indulged, as if they were the victims of their own self-inflicted drama – around whom, all else must be made to revolve. Their selfishness, their disregard for others, is something to be affirmed and championed, it seems.
Because magic blackness.
And this is advanced as obviously desirable, an unassailable course of action. As “social justice.” As if it imposed no cost on others, over and over again. But I suspect my attempts to get to grips with vector calculus would be somewhat impaired, or made entirely impossible, by lots of shrieking and general arsing about.
See also this, in which Ms Xochitl Gonzalez, a columnist for the Atlantic, and who repeatedly mentions how “minority” and “of colour” she is, is mystified and annoyed by people who don’t appreciate loud hip-hop in a university library. Where other people, better people, are trying to study for exams.
[ Post updated a third time. ]
See, I keep saying this place is switched-on and interactive.
That photo. Still laughing.
Yes, despite her claims of minority status – and they are frequent and numerous – Ms Gonzalez might easily be mistaken for one of the white devils she so pointedly disdains. Why, it’s almost as if she were using her claims of minority status as a license to misbehave, a shield against normal pushback. To be an obnoxious cow with something like impunity.
But no, perish the thought.
Dicentra: ‘…but because I’d “made a bigoted assumption about a trans person’s genitals” when I chose to knee him in the balls.’
i can only imagine how hard it must have been to escort people off the premises who would have been doubled up with laughter….
Hehe. You’re not supposed to say that.
But it’s interesting how so much of this contrived horseshit presupposes the forgetting of any moral or antisocial aspect to the behaviour they excuse. As if the obvious selfishness of it, the rudeness, must never be remarked upon. Say, when blasting out your Brooklyn hip-hop playlist in a fucking library.
And then daring to feign victimhood, a righteous indignation, when the people actually trying to study asked you to turn it off.
And then writing an article for the Atlantic, in which you recount these things as if you were the victim, a sympathetic figure, someone to be affirmed.
Better people scarcely covers it.
I agree. Doing both well simultaneously probably is a challenge, especially if the job is high-responsibility.
</manspreads>
Heh. Exactly.
It’s clearly an inversion of the purpose of education. They are dictating to the schools/teachers/educated people their ignorance as “education”. The absurdity of it is truly astounding.
Proof, pudding. Some assembly required. Ah, but their failures in that department are just signs that even more of The System, Man is against them and must be changed. Thus, socialism.
Xochitl is also a hypocrite who escaped the covid-era ambulance sirens to infect my neck of the woods.
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but we went from having an “all politics are local” Democrat representing the area in the Assembly to a bonkers Democratic Socialist thanks to all the NYC people moving up here. (And pricing normies out, too.)
[ Compiles Friday’s Ephemera, ponders lunch options. ]
[ Muffled chuckling. ]
A gross misuse of the word “social”. A favorite tactic of the left is to distort language in the service of leftist lies. “Social.” “Homeless”. “Unhoused”. “Justice-involved”. The list is endless.
And, of course, black kids are not learning math by being disruptive. The only thing they’re learning is that they can get away with being barbarians.
And so we see public cries of “he dindu nuffin!” while the bodycam video of what he did is being played.
Especially when I would bollix up the italics and got thrown in the Correction Booth.
Lots of academics, authors, actors, and musicians enjoy only moderate financial success. No accumulated millions to fall back on. But plenty of spouses and children depending on them.
I heard that putdown a lot in the 70’s and 80’s from feminists who had no idea how by their own words they condemned themselves.
Yeah…yeah…That’s rich but not Rich. He wasn’t talking about those people. Per John Rich from the link…
Meanwhile and directly to your point, plenty of people with much less “success” than those you mention are willing to do truly dangerous work in jobs where other people even shoot at and try to kill them. They have spouses and children too. But not millions, or in many cases even thousands, to fall back on.
Snort.
Which reminded me of the “bring your whole self to work” thing, mentioned here, and which, for those self-designated as “marginalised and racialised,” entails round-the-clock self-involvement and behaving in ways that are likely to be “interpreted as violent or aggressive.”
No, really.
At which point, this, by Heather Mac Donald, came to mind:
And what could the music of Mozart – a man, a composer of pallor – possibly have to offer a black woman, any black woman?
I mean, you say this stuff out loud, stripped of its pretensions, and it does sound rather bigoted. And yet, among some, it’s the new ideal.
A measure of sophistication.
Maybe they were too preoccupied by bitching about Bach? And don’t get them started on Gregorian chant.
And yes, Bitching About Bach is my new band’s name so…
Attacked by a pack of polynomials?
OT: David is there a way to remain logged-in on two computers? Sometimes I want to upvote and find I’m logged-in on the other computer. The site seems to auto logout after some amount of time.
Um, you may be overestimating my IT prowess. Which is sweet of you, if recklessly misguided. I’m logged in on my laptop and my phone, simultaneously, and they keep me logged in. My tablet, however, tends to log me out after a few days. Not sure why there’s a difference.
Between iPhone, iPad and Windows I seem to always be logged in. God forbid I get logged out and have to remember my password.
Are your two computers connected to the net via the same router?
Addendum: that may not be an issue – I just logged to the site using a separate browser (Chrome variant) on the same machine.
I do get logged off after a few days using my primary browser (Vivaldi).
Notice the top comment.
Someone above commented to the effect of put up or shut up. That is, establish a noisy fun classroom and prove to us that your Brilliance shows up. Just FYI there are hundreds of all black schools in the inner city. Those that are Catholic or charter schools have black students who focus and do homework and they get into college on merit. The other schools….not so much. Oh, look! A controlled experiment has already been done! And it refutes your premise!
Also, at least 30 years ago I was reading some tripe about some women who were going to do “feminist math”. Results? nah
An interesting thing about science and engineering: no one really cares about if you are M or F or brown or yellow or green. Your code works well or not. The calculations are correct or not. You can submit a manuscript to a journal with just your first initial so they do not know your sex. It is the most egalitarian of any work world.
The thirst for knowledge. /sarc
Heh. Well, quite. As Anna quipped in the original thread, “Maybe she should listen and find out.”
Though that would entail shifting the spotlight away from herself and her fascinating blackness. And we can’t have that.
So two women had to be educated, hired, trained and given benefits to do the work of one man. That sounds suboptimal.
Or, rather, poor Polly Nomial herself being attacked.
“They’re telling maths jokes, Maureen.”
“I’ll fetch your shotgun, love.”
Band name. “Mathematical Violence” is their first album.
Dude, sit down. The office either allowed them to share the job (1 job, split salary) or LOSE these talented women to the more flexible private sector. MANY women choose part-time work (with reduced pay/benefits) while the kids are young. Why shouldn’t an employer find creative ways to keep deserving talent?
Conservative women: job standards should be based on merit, not relaxed to suit less-competent special interest groups
Also conservative women: “Why shouldn’t an employer find creative ways to keep deserving talent?”
He ends with a call to find even more stuff to screw with them. Which, I used to think that “owning the Left” was lame, but methinks at this time in our history it’s a good strategy. Keeps them from organizing something truly malicious.
BAKE THE CAKE, BIGOT.
Jack Phillips smiles enigmatically, but only for a moment.
Via Insty…We Yanks best not be feeling oh so superior to the Brits in regards to censorship and hate speech. Illinois, Washington, Vermont, Connecticut, California, New York, Maryland , along with cities as diverse as Missoula, MT and Philadelphia, PA have rat-your-neighbor tools to fight hate speech.
Free to decline though, so no worries.
That is the problem. Women CHOOSE to do that. Whether jobs that allow part time, or become a GP and switch to 2-3 days etc.
And the reason they CHOOSE to do that is because, though it’s a difficult job (though much less so once kids are at school age), it’s also a far more satisfying and enjoyable option compared to sitting at an office desk or construction site.
Nothing wrong with that, in fact it’s great, best of both worlds, ensuring children get a mother’s time and affection, while not losing the woman’s talent and (from the family’s pov) income.
The reason some of us are highly annoyed though, is twofold.
Firstly, most women, include many of those who CHOOSE the part time option… also pretend as if they are being FORCED to do so, as if it’s some kind of slavery.
Secondly, there is utter contempt and disrespect for the man who doesn’t get to CHOOSE, and is forced to slog away at a job full time so that his wife can CHOOSE.
Women are happy to indulge the notion that the men are somehow having an easy life, and there is also systemic, society wide disparaging of male roles, while men still get to do those roles because women want to CHOOSE.
That’s where the frustration of those like Cloudbuster comes from.
You get the expensive professional training, while complaining about the patriarchy and how you hate “unpaid labour” and “traditional roles”….and then happily work part time when the time comes, while your husband slaves away to support your choice.
Not everyone has a warrior personality. It would be nice to see less online contempt for such people, and I’ve seen quite a bit in various fora. (Related: consigning to the Outer Darkness anyone who does not agree 100% with all of someone’s conservative positions. Much better to welcome those with whom one has some common ground and hope to eventually build more agreement–making enemies rarely helps.)
Not to mention that everyone has to make their own judgements about risk. And note that someone with a multi-million dollar mortgage is also vulnerable to sudden loss of income.
Tangentially related: The highly talented female STEM majors who, after graduation, decided to marry and raise kids instead of pursue a career in math or chemistry.
I recall their college boyfriends expressing disappointment at the waste. And professors who said this happened often enough that they always had misgivings over the time they would spend mentoring female students, as they had only limited time to mentor future mathematicians and scientists and didn’t want that time to be wasted.
I have seen claims online* of witnessing many black kids openly expressing zero interest in any subject which was not explicitly and specifically about black people–and especially about victimization.
* To be taken with a grain of salt, since they were online and undocumented. But they did seem to fit the general pattern of ghetto rot.
Jessye wept.