Via Toni Airaksinen, more from the hothouse world of pretentious agonising:
A curriculum writer who works at a lesson-planning agency for middle school teachers has published a paper arguing that math classes “perpetuate whiteness,”
The curriculum writer in question, Michael Lolkus, is keen to let the world know that he champions “equity- and social justice-oriented instructional practices.” “Whiteness,” it turns out, is something to be chided and “decentred” in favour of “ethnomathematics investigations.” “The lens of whiteness” we’re told, will be turned upon itself and “critical interrogation” will ensue.
Because, among the agonised, buzzwords must abound. Lest their status be in doubt.
And so, the paper, published in the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education – which I’d assumed would be more concerned with issues of urban planning and traffic management – contains much fretting and many assumptions:
In his essay to educators, Lolkus begins by arguing that “educational spaces, particularly those centred on mathematics, uphold and promote whiteness,” and that efforts to fix this are still marred by “white liberal ideas” of what mathematics should be.
Quite how those unspecified “white” ideas alter the rules of multiplication, percentages and other simple mathematical operations remains a thing of mystery. Indeed, as so often, the precise nature of this alleged corruption, this all-pervasive and befouling “whiteness” – a term used 157 times – is left to the imagination. Though much is pitched upon that mystery:
Because Lolkus is a white male (he/him), he bemoans the way that he might unintentionally contribute to this issue, and argues that this paper will be an introspective journey into how he might be contributing to oppression in the classroom.
You see, Mr Lolkus fears he may be crushing brown-skinned students with his rampant, manly pallor.
“I am working to distance myself from whiteness,” says our fretful hero. Because “white educators like me need to embrace the burden of unpacking and dismantling white supremacy.” And so, Mr Lolkus will “grapple with my complicity in working within an educational system that… maintains white supremacy culture.”
White supremacy culture. In maths class. One of so many terms left intriguingly nebulous, but from which All Good Hearted People are expected to recoil with handkerchiefs clutched to their faces.
The nearest we get to gritty particulars is a brief stream of bald assertion:
“Dominant narratives in the United States position mathematics as a colourblind and culturally neutral discipline. The values, cultures and experiences of People of Colour, Black, and Indigenous communities are often ignored or devalued in math classes” he explains.
“Representation” is touched on fleetingly, though the question of why black middle-school pupils being as yet unfamiliar with, say, Katherine Johnson or Euphemia Haynes might impair their comprehension of fractions is oddly unexplored. Or likewise, why any 10-year-old of East Asian ancestry might struggle with long division on account of hearing insufficient praise for Wu Wenjun’s algebraic topology.
Mr Lolkus laments his “positionality” as a structurer of lessons and “knower of… mathematical concepts,” wishing instead to be merely a “community member.” A somewhat fanciful flattening of “hierarchy,” and of values, and an abandonment of the teacher’s customary responsibility. This is followed by a suggestion that pupils, especially underperforming minority pupils – the party least familiar with the subject matter – should be put in charge of structuring lessons and the broader curriculum. A sure-fire recipe for success.
And then there’s the conceit that heroically brown pupils are performing “additional labour” by doing less well in class, or by not doing the work at all.
“Whiteness is often represented by low expectations of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, which serve to maintain racial hierarchies in mathematics classrooms. These low expectations based on racialised identity markers and other personal biases can manifest in fewer opportunities to engage with ambitious and rigorous mathematics” for students.
Regarding low expectations, do hold that thought. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Meanwhile, our educator offers a boldly modish analysis. Says Mr Lolkus, “My experiences as an upper middle-class white male informed every decision I made,” and by “positioning myself, a white male… as an authority figure” – which is to say, a teacher – this has somehow rendered minority students unable to do simple mathematics.
Or put another way, if a teacher feels equipped to teach a subject that they have studied for many years – such that they feel they are likely to know its particulars in more detail than middle-school children – then this is a cause for concern, a basis for ostentatious atonement. Provided the teacher in question is white, obviously.
And worse – more damning still – Mr Lolkus adds – or rather, confesses – that he grew up as a “heterosexual and cisgender male.”
And so, should some black pupils be struggling with middle-school mathematics, then this can only be explained by the fact that their teacher is pale-skinned and heterosexual. This, then, is the bleeding edge of “equity” scholarship. And the makings of a “social justice” revolution in knowledge transfer.
At which point, readers may wonder whether the institutional influence of so many scrupulously woke, racially fixated neurotics – creatures much like Mr Lolkus – may be among the other, perhaps more obvious causes of impairment and disparity.
Regarding those low expectations, denounced earlier, readers may recall a previous mention of Mr Lolkus and his peers, with our educators devising elaborate excuses for pupils who are undisciplined, selfish, and disruptive – provided said pupils are of a suitable hue.
Excuses in which maths classes are framed as an arena of “violence and trauma.” Specifically, the “trauma” of not knowing the answers, on account of not paying attention, and the “violence” of being corrected for being loud and disruptive in class while others are trying to work. According to our radical reinventors of education, attempts to teach calculus and geometry should be enlivened with shouting, tardiness, and lots of adorable “cacophony.”
On grounds that “whiteness” – say, expectations of accuracy, promptness, and diligence – is something that gets in the way of black students “maintaining their Blackness.”
So no low expectations there, obviously.
Recent Comments