Disassembling and understanding “” is impossible because math is already equitable; numbers and graphs don’t know the color of a student’s skin. Bill Gates knows skin color, intimately, however, so he has created a new math to dismantle white supremacy in mathematics.
“A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction; Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction” is a handbook on a lot of concepts that are just that…concepts. The handbook, which is already being pushed in schools by the Oregon Department of Health at present, offers educators five “strides,” each of which describes ways to ascertain if they’re racist as educators and how they can teach math in non-racist ways.
The professional development stride offers such helpful advice as, “expectations both within and across classrooms, and interrogate them for ways in which they uphold white supremacy culture and other dominant ways of being. (Re)align them with antiracist, social justice, transformative justice, and restorative justice practices.”
If that’s not clear, the “reflections” portion of the last “stride” reads, “How have I grown in my ability to reframe my thinking and judgment, and incorporate more unbiased information when some- thing does not meet my expectations? Do I unpack whether my expectation is appropriate?”
In other words, is there a such thing as a mathematically incorrect answer, or am I, as an educator, racist for expecting that my black or Latino student adds ten plus ten to equal twenty?
The handbook also offers suggestions on how to deal with students during participation time. “Participation structures reinforce dominant ways of being. Classrooms are often microcosms of the world around us and reinforce dominant (or white) ways of being. For example, small groups of students receive the teacher’s attention throughout instruction and a few students are typically called on to participate in class discussions, reinforcing notions of perfectionism. The patterns of students who fall into those categories often mirror societal norms. Another common participation structure is pairing students as helper and helpee. This reinforces paternalism and other power structures that identify students as either being good or bad at math (also either/or thinking). Also, requiring students to raise their hand before speaking can rein- force paternalism and powerhoarding, in addition to breaking the process of thinking, learning, and communicating.”
Educators are warned not to use classroom helpers because that practice prolongs paternalism. Also, the handbook makes it very clear that teachers are racist; they may all have a tendency to believe that some kids are good at math and some are not. Bill Gates’s handbook, though, makes it clear that there are never right or wrong answers…only racist ones.
The eighty-two page document is word salad; it’s a lot of pages about nothing at all other than baseless claims of systemic racism in the educational system with no empirical data, much like COVID-19 lockdowns, to back up those dangerous claims. The remedy the manual offers is to make educators feel like they’re all racist, even if they don’t know it yet. In turn, those educators must question if there are truly right or wrong answers in mathematics, especially if answers that are “incorrect” come from a Black or Latino person. This all leads to an education system that lacks standards or meaningful measurements of progress.
Gates’s math handbook reads more like a manual on convincing unsuspecting people they’re racist when they’re not, as well as further destroying the US education system, than a teaching manual.
Bill Gates also quickly pulled off the switch half a decade ago, leaving many parents uncertain about current mathematical methods taught in schools and somewhat unable to assist their children with homework. Gates, who works closely with Dr. Fauci and the Biden administration, behaves as if he’s intentionally destroying the American educational system rather than helping build it.
American educators, representative of the US population, are being conditioned to believe that they have taught math as white supremacists all along; they just needed Bill Gates to point out their inherently always present racism so that their ideas about math could be corrected.
