Canada is launching a new math program in schools. Authorities believe that the classic attitude towards the natural sciences involves a generalization of racism. Dark-skinned and LGBT students face systemic barriers.
The Canadian province of Ontario has included anti-racism activism in its 9th grade math curriculum. The authorities accused this science of normalizing racism and demanded that math classes should in the future be in question systems of power and privilege.
According to him, black and LGBT students, among others, experienced “systemic barriers” such as racism and implicit bias in accessing sophisticated math classes. Educators are expected not only to identify and overcome such barriers, but also to provide all students with the ability to recognize that mathematics can be used as “measures to address social and environmental issues such as inequality and discrimination”. To identify, explore and find out how it can be used, analyzed and propagated.”
The curriculum, now published by the provincial government, calls for so-called Eurocentric ideas when math learning is questioned and an “anti-racist and anti-discrimination environment” is created:
“Mathematics was used to normalize racism and the marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledge, and only a non-colonial, anti-racist approach in math classes reveals its historical roots and social construction. “
As a result, teachers are challenged to promote different types of learning, for example, to bring “indigenous knowledge” into their lessons to help students develop “healthy and strong identities”. The program, titled “Culturally Relevant and Responsible Pedagogy”, will also address “the issue of power and social justice in math classes”.
The controversy in Ontario reflects a recent trend towards mathematics curricula that places less emphasis on gifted programs or seeks to eliminate them altogether and questions the objectivity of this science, particularly in the US. In California, for example, proposed curriculum changes are aimed at abandoning gifted programs and an allegedly racist “right answer” practice.
The proposed California math reform includes the use of a teaching guide themed “The Road to Equitable Teaching of Mathematics”. The program, which is funded at least partially by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is reportedly being implemented in schools in the US states of Georgia, Ohio and Oregon. The core of the program is the assumption that the concept of fairness in mathematics is “obviously wrong”. Teachers are required to demonstrate that the system is being used to perpetuate “capitalist, imperialist and racist ideas”. Now the aim is to enable all the students to achieve “equally high results”.
Dr Kulwinder Kaur Gill, a pediatrician in Ontario, Canada, said the province had become the “clown capital of the world”, with government policies declaring mathematics “racist” and a source of “white supremacy”. Contrary to the new curriculum, math school was her “first love” because of her cross-lingual fairness, according to the doctor. He said that the authorities have replaced the reality of objective facts and truth with delusions of subjective ideologies.
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