Pages

Monday, March 24, 2014

"And yes, math is political, too”

Uh, no it’s actually ..From TRUTH REVOLT
Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, spoke at the Network for Public
Education conference in Austin, Texas, recently and implored her audience of public educators to promote social justice by politicizing math.
Giving a nod to her fellow Milwaukee Teachers Union president and liberal activist pal Bob Peterson, Lewis explained how to promote social justice in math word problems, such as changing “Johnny” to “José” and instead of writing ”Johnny buys some pencils,” change it to, “José works in a factory.”
Lewis said:
You want to talk about organizing? You want to talk about social justice? Can I just use a Bob Peterson story, a quick one?
People always talk about that there’s no politics and values in math — that you can teach math and there’s no place for social justice. So let me tell you how Bob deals with that. Everyone has seen that story problem that says, “Johnny has five pencils and if he spent two cents for the red pencil, then eight cents for the green pencils and he’s got 47 cents, how many pencils can he buy?” We’ve all seen that, right? That’s a very political statement because it’s all about consumerism. It’s about buying stuff, right?
Bob Peterson tells them about José working in a factory making piecemeal clothes. He uses the same numbers and gets the same answer. And yes, math is political, too. Sisters and brothers, don’t fall for the okey doke. Don’t let people tell you there’s one way to do anything.
Peterson — seen here rallying Chicago teachers — contributed to a book entitled, “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers.” EAGnews.org says, “The book is a mix of math lesson plans and essays from activist educators who explain how they’ve used their classrooms to advance a progressive political philosophy.”

It is reported that two main themes emerge: “the U.S. is a hopelessly racist country that routinely oppresses ‘people of color’ and “capitalism’s unequal distribution of wealth is the root cause of the world’s suffering.”

EAG explains:
As the “Rethinking” teachers demonstrate, the math concepts of ratios, averages, percentages, bar graphs, density and geometric formulas are very useful when training kids to see the world in their preferred categories of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’
Lewis and Peterson are in cahoots, and with other social justice activists and educators, are gunning to shape the minds of America’s youth. They are in our schools and will stop at nothing to cram their agenda into daily school “lessons.”
So, wonder what the result of this BLATANT socialist, communist dialectic, apocalyptic means of making every single item of daily life into a lesson in political thought of social justice?
This isn’t the wait for iPhone 6.

That’s the line for FRESH BREAD

No comments:

Post a Comment