Teaching
Math Still Has to Add Up
We need all of our kids to be numerate to be competitive in a
tech-driven world. Trying to create politically correct mathematics courses
won't help them.
I've been the president of two colleges - one I founded, the
other I saved from folding. Over the last 40-plus
years, I've taught entrepreneurship,
innovation and change management at another dozen
universities around the world. Finally, I've invested in numerous ed-tech
startups over several decades. This journey hasn't exactly made me an
expert on education -- no one actually is -- but it's taught me a great deal
about what it means to be a successful teacher.
My pedagogic aspirations have been straightforward and consistent since my earliest
days as an instructor and lecturer. The benchmark I use to measure
my results is simple: it's not so much a question of what I taught (or how
good I felt about that process) as it was a matter of what my pupils actually
learned and took with them. Teachers don't teach subjects; they teach
students. And it's the students' takeaways -- not the teacher's
thoughts, feelings or theories -- that matter.
But education that imparts practical knowledge is now being
attacked in West Coast think tanks and school systems in places like
Oregon, where it seems that wokeness is subverting wisdom when it comes to things
like teaching mathematics. A case in point is a 82-page instructional
manual created by Education Trust West and passed along by the Oregon
Department of Education; the ETW guide seeks to "help"
teachers root out the awful and pervasive ways in which white supremacy
is perpetuated by everyday teacher actions in math classes. You can assume
that ETW means well and has children's interest in mind; but good intentions in
this case add up to a lot of baloney.
Two of the horrible behaviors which are specifically called out
as grievous wrongs guaranteed to cause educational harm, particularly to
non-white students are: (i) simply asking students to show their work in class
using words and numbers; and (ii) focusing on getting the correct answer. The
ETW guide goes on to say that the idea that math is objective and that
answers are either right or wrong is unequivocally false.
Similarly, tracking students success and, in fact, simply
grading students are equally verboten. These are tools and tenets of
white culture as is the "worship of the written
word." In their free time, teachers are also asked
to "identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold
capitalist, imperialist and racist views" and to share this knowledge with
their students.
I always felt that my primary responsibility to my students was
to help prepare them for successful employment in the real
world. This obligation entailed considerably more than
just prepping them for a particular job-- it was an attempt to prepare them for
the lives ahead of them. Another of my overarching objectives was to
work hard to remove the sad and ill-conceived stigma that we've attached
to vocational and technical education in this country.
These days - where everything in our world seems to involve and
incorporate technology - it's a little less difficult to convince people
that there are many different and equally attractive ways to earn a decent
living. They understand that well-trained car mechanics are as
likely today to be using a computer as a crescent wrench. Software
engineers - straight out of school - earn multiples of what an English
major might and, when your pipes are busted, a great plumber is worth
at least three philosophers.
But whatever career you aspire to and wherever you go to school,
it's always been a given that you will need a solid foundation of certain
knowledge and skills to succeed. You may not need to be a math whiz, but
you've got to at least know the basics. Eventually you'll build upon and
enhance those capabilities - you'll earn the right to do things your own
ways - but only after you've mastered the fundamentals.
But sadly, people who are setting policies like these can
potentially impact the educations and lives of thousands of students who
ultimately are the victims of this lunacy. It's the kids - the
student "customers" - whose futures, employment prospects, and
livelihoods are being imperiled and someone needs to speak up for them
before it's too late. We're facing a serious problem when the high schools
(and many colleges) aren't doing their jobs and the graduates that we hire
don't have the chops to do theirs.
Much like the insane debates over vaccines and wearing masks
that have become so highly politicized, political correctness
has invaded and infected even the most sacrosanct principles of education
in ways that threaten to deprive an entire generation of students
of the tools, skills and substance that they will need to
succeed in the new digital economy. The likely net effect of these kinds
of claims and policies is that the students in their charge won't be able
to adequately function in the real world because -- apart from no longer
understanding that there are actual and factual differences between
correct and incorrect - they won't have a clue that 2 + 2 always equals 4.
Education is a business that's too important and too valuable to
be left in the hands of educators. Inefficiency and incompetence in business
are serious problems; in education, where misguided efforts to right past
wrongs can mortgage the futures and mess with the lives of our students, they
are sins.