The new math has more on 'social justice,' less math

Black and Hispanic students who are taught the new, anti-racist, social justice-infused math won't have careers in science, technology, engineering or math, writes Lee Fang on Real Clear Investigations. They won't become doctors or nurses, architects, bankers, business leaders or entrepreneurs. Because they won't know enough math.

Photo: Lillian Mongeau/EdSource

Progressive foundations are spending millions to "remake K-12 mathematics education" in hopes of motivating disadvantaged students, he writes. Money earned in high tech by people who were very, very good at math is being spent to promote unproven ideas and dubious fads.

The Gates-funded “Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction" rejects asking students to "show their work" and find the "right answer," writes Fang. It's "white supremacy culture."

The Heising-Simons Foundation supported a public-school experiment in Alexandria, Virginia. K-2 students were encouraged to count the characters in picture books by race. "Teachers guided students in creating racial scorecards for each book, then voting to select those with the fewest white characters," he writes.

These "deep-pocket donors" also fund Danny Bernard Martin, a professor of math education at the University of Illinois at Chicago who co-leads the Erikson Institute's Racial Justice in Early Math Project. Martin believes traditional math instruction is "dehumanizing and violent" for black students. Comparing math teachers to "missionaries" teaching "cannibals," Martin calls for black students to be taught math only by black teachers in black institutions and to boycott traditional classes.

In a 2023 workshop, Martin's group promoted “numberless word problems,” writes Fang. Sisa Pon Renie, one presenter, called for challenging the “persistent myth that math is just abstract and without any cultural relevance.” The goal is “helping children understand how mathematics might be an important tool to understand social issues and promote justice.” (To be fair, teachers eventually provide numbers for the word problems, once students have discussed them.)

Bill Evers of the Independent Institute pointed out an equity problem with embedding math lessons in critical-theory frameworks. Immigrant students who aren't completely fluent in English will be lost. Often non-fluent students can succeed in math long before they do well in other classes, because they're learning the language of math at the same time as their classmates. Loading down math problems with words makes it harder, he says. "And it's not even math."

Many disadvantaged students who speak only English don't have large vocabularies and struggle with reading comprehension. They're going to be frustrated by social justice jargon too. And it's not even math.

I think a kids deserve a chance to learn math, which they can then go on to use to analyze social issues, promote justice, build a bridge, run a business or whatever. To teach badly -- or to teach something else instead of math -- is unjust. And, if only the black and Hispanic kids are held to low expectations, it's inequitable.