Yesterday, as a topic for it's daily paper.....USA Today asked the question.....is math racist?
I've seen the subject on more than a couple of occasions, and generally laughed over the discussion.
There are around four issues which seem to 'hover' above this topic.
First, ever since Black Lives Matter started up.....they needed 'targets' to hype upon and this math business is one of them. The belief is that black kids do badly in math and never grasp various applications. So in the general mindset....it has to be racist. In this case.....I would suggest that there are substantial numbers of math instructors (across America) who are not capable of teaching math.
If you are in a crappy and marginally-run school....the odds are your math scores (from both whites/blacks) will be limited. It's not a racist thing.....it's more like a poor instructor problem.
Second, there are some individuals who believe you can dumb-down math, and make it simpler. You know....the same way that you can dumb down geography, English, science, etc. The problem with this logic is that math has spent several thousand years getting to the point where it is about as dumbed-down as it can possibly be.
Third, if you tried to just stamp math as marginally required, and let kids off the hook at the fifth-grade level (doing the same for English, History, Science).....then you might as well release/graduate kids at the sixth-grade and send them off to Burger King to flip burgers.
Fourth and final.....with the exception of the French Fry guy at BK.....there just aren't any jobs in America where math does not occur. I know it's shocking but if you go dig into most all jobs (even as President)....some kind of math occurs with jobs. Even dope dealers, transmission mechanics, and bartenders have to deal with some element of math to be successful in life.
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