2 + 2 = White Supremacy: How Woke Ideologues Corrupted Canada’s Math Curriculum — nationalreview.com
White supremacy? Wasn’t arithmetic invented by the Babylonians? Were Babylonians white?
How great a threat is white supremacy in Canada? I’m thinking not much since when I’ve been in Canada, I didn’t see anything but white people and a few Asians.
From the above-linked article:
Two plus two no longer equals four, according to members of the Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association (OMCA), who consider the equation to be a white-supremacist dog whistle instead of a basic mathematical truth.
According to a webinar created by OMCA president Jason To, proponents of math’s political neutrality who use the phrasing “2 + 2 = 4” are engaged in an act of “Covert White Supremacy.”
Former OMCA president Heather Theijsmeijer, who originally publicized the webinar, pointed to commentary by Laurie Rubel, an associate professor of mathematics education, explaining that proponents of “2 + 2 = 4” are grounded “in white, Western mathematics that marginalizes other possible values.”
Not to marginalize the horror of marginalizing things, but there are no other possible values for 2 + 2.
Meanwhile, for some probably unrelated reason, test scores in Ontario have plummeted.
Not even half of sixth-grade students meet provincial math standards at present; 52 percent of ninth-graders met the bar during the 2021–2022 school year, down from 75 percent just three years prior, according to provincial standardized testing administered by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). Woke Math advocates have doubled down in the face of falling performance, seeking to incorporate so-called Indigenous Knowledge Systems and anti-racism.
Theijsmeijer and OMCA did not respond to a request for comment.
I can only think of two possible explanations. Either Ontario students are more than 30 percent dumber than they were three years ago, or the quality of math education, as a consequence of politicizing the curriculum, is 30 percent worse than it was three years ago. The second explanation seems more likely.
For the last decade, the EQAO has documented the continuous decline of math scores among third- and sixth-graders. International tests such as the OECD’s “gold standard” Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show similar declines.
To facilitate comparisons, PISA standardizes test scores around an average of 500 score points. Students in the Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang regions in China had by far the highest average scores in reading (555), math (591) and science (590), vaulting over previously dominant Singapore, which was relegated to second place. Macao and Hong Kong, other Chinese territories, were also in the top four places in reading and math.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that while kids in Ontario were learning to be anti-racist and queer-affirming, and searching for other possible values for 2 + 2, kids in the high-scoring regions were actually learning math.