Woke Math: Righting Old Wrongs, Healing Old Wounds

In recent days I have read articles describing the introduction of Woke Math in the public schools. The articles outlined how Woke and DEI principles would influence the teaching of mathematics, going forward. At the core of this “campaign” is a condemnation of traditional math as a fundamental White Supremacy construct designed to keep the minority races down by making them unable to participate in well-paid occupations. The advocates say these “flaws” must be corrected.

Deborah Lowenberg Ball, a mathematics professor and former dean of the University of Michigan School of Education declares that Math proficiency is certainly an arm of White Supremacy. She complains that math is a “harbor for whiteness and racism.” Making math proficiency a sign of intelligence, she says, is entirely “racist” because so many minority students are low achievers in math. (I always knew it was evil.)

Ms. Ball’s solution included a plug for her consultancy, Teaching Works – funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – which is ready to profit by assisting school districts to interrupt “patterns of racism.”

This paradigm – the idea that getting the right answer, using the right method, or believing that some students are more capable than others is white supremacy – is being strongly endorsed by educators, leading mathematics organizations, and policy makers like the Oregon and California Departments of Education. Much of the research and the dissemination of this educational movement is funded by the Gates Foundation. Last year Gates spent some $642 million for its U.S. program, including Pathways and other initiatives that focus on eliminating white supremacy from math.

The racist math story has been around for a few years.  Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at University of Illinois, asserts: “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as white.” Gutierrez worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, as “curricula emphasizing terms like “Pythagorean theorem” and “pi” perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other white Europeans.

“Critical race theory is something that can be and is being applied to all subjects,” Jonathan Butcher, an education fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. “You have this argument that math is meant to combat white supremacy as opposed to giving students the tools they need to succeed in school and in life. Math is a tool of racial warfare instead of something that is supposed to prepare students to be successful in the job market or as they go off to college.”

Butcher noted that California adopted a series of changes to its math standards in 2021. Included in the changes was a section on “teaching for equity and engagement.” He says the stated goal of race-based math standards is to close the math achievement gap between racial groups. (One way to accomplish this is to make all students equally stupid. Is this a great country, or what?)

A few years back a writer named Michael Howard related his experiences teaching junior high math in Austin, Texas. Mr. Howard taught there for a half-year, but his contract was not renewed because of “irreconcilable differences” between him and the school system. He said student self-esteem was such an obsession in Austin that students who had trouble memorizing the multiplication tables were given a small card containing those facts (through 9×9). The card could be carried and referenced at any time, including during tests.

Mr. Howard saw that this “crutch” prevented students from developing the skills needed to become mathematically functional. By always using the card they couldn’t gain the facility with multiplication facts one needs to master fractions, algebra, and successively higher branches of mathematics. Mr. Howard cited this misguided sensitivity as one of the reasons he lost confidence in the public school system. (No doubt they were glad to see the back of him.) This was one of the early shots fired across the bow of traditional mathematics education.

As a product of public schools in the “pre-enlightened” era, I can only say that those Austin students – as well as students being liberated by the Woke Math initiatives – can thank their lucky stars that they weren’t subjected to the self-esteem-destroying (probably racist) horror of my own mathematics education in Allentown, PA – circa 1952. Our teacher, Miss Schenk, was, shall we say, “neo-Hitlerian” in her teaching style.

A harridan of uncertain age, fierce temper, and tiger-like stealth, Fräulein Schenk might, at any moment, spring with heart-stopping suddenness upon an unsuspecting student whose attention was wandering. Without warning she would crash her ruler – carried like a Nazi swagger-stick – down upon the desk of an evildoer. She splintered at least twenty of them during the term. (Rulers, that is – not desks.) She was a true “educational fascist” – ein Deutsche Lehrerin – obviously ahead of her time.

But the cruelest part of her modus operandi fascisti was her twisted use of mathematical material as punishment. When a student misbehaved in some way, his/her name was entered on a section of the blackboard reserved for the names of miscreants. Having one’s name posted there indicated a requirement to write and hand in the multiplication tables (through 12×12) – repeated tenfold. (Talk about cruel and unusual punishment! I still cringe thinking of it.)

Additional infractions added tics to one’s name – each tic requiring a repetition of the full multiplication-tables assignment. (Some students had dozens of additional tics.) As students handed in their assignments, tics were erased. Truants periodically received fierce tongue-lashings to motivate completion of their assignments. Bales of paper were used up in that pre-environmental era. Today, that class would be raided by the Eco-cops.

Some kids must have written the tables dozens or scores of times. Naturally, they could recite them in their sleep. One can only imagine the rage this must have produced in some of those 13-year-olds sitting in the back of the class, who had repeated the 5^th grade several times. Luckily, educators now understand that such kids should be pushed through the system and out the door without over-concern for whether they actually know anything. Too late for me, educators finally realized that self-esteem and protection from White Supremacy are far more important than mere knowledge of a racist discipline.

Today, a teacher like Miss Schenk would be charged with student-abuse. Armed police would frog-march her from the classroom in handcuffs, on her way to serving hard time. Her liberated captives would rush gleefully to erase their names (and tics) from the blackboard, as choruses of “Free at Last! Free at Last!” would ring through the hallways.

Seventy-plus years on, I often think about her methods and reflect on the damage she must have done. True, some of her students – including Yours Truly – went on to mathematical and scientific careers. We sailed through the high-tech era well “ahead of the curve” – coping easily with complex economic and mathematical matters. We never had to endure the pain of making incorrect measurements, being unable to balance the checkbook, or being shortchanged at stores. Multiplication facts sprang instantly to mind when we needed them.

Even those “holdbacks” in the rear of das Fräulein’s class – guys who later ran gas stations or drove beer trucks – turned out to be “very sharp” with numbers. (No doubt, however, they still had nightmares from the punitive tables-writing they had to endure.)

But there was an even darker Dark Side. In years ahead, many of us who survived Miss Schenk’s classes insensitively twitted wooly-headed clerks who, despite high self-esteem, couldn’t make correct change to save their lives, if the cash register didn’t calculate it. Car salesmen couldn’t confuse us, and we had no pity on them. How they must have hated a customer who could do arithmetic in his head. Ditto for mortgage brokers, investment counselors, and bankers.

Tax returns held no terrors – only boredom. We laughed at lotteries that offered 1-in-125,000,000 odds. And we refused to borrow on credit cards with 18% interest rates. Indeed, we probably undermined the economy by preventing some people from making an easy buck. I am ashamed to realize it today.

Do the positives offset the Dark Side? Who can say? But I still shudder at the tyranny, the cruelty, and the uncaring insistence – now recognized as racist – that we master those math facts. There was no appeal – no sensitive official to deliver us! In those days we didn’t know enough to skip class, torch trash bins, organize marches on the school board, and demand resignations. It was a terrible ordeal. For years I had recurring nightmares in which I found my name on the malefactors’ blackboard with scores of tics beside it.

Yet this is not the full measure of math-abuse. My entire life has been cursed with the perverse ability to recognize incorrect calculations, and an uncontrollable urge to call for their correction. (I hate myself for this.) The church treasurer groans when he sees me at congregational meetings. Business associates fumed when I critiqued the numbers in their presentations. (The guy who knows when a calculation is wrong, and says so, is never popular.) I still worry about a midnight-raid by Department of Education “math-abuse agents” who have finally caught up with me. I know it’s just a matter of time.

I sometimes wonder if I might have turned out better adjusted, and a better citizen, if Fräulein Schenk had been stopped before she ruined me and so many others by making us mathematically capable. Wouldn’t it have been better to be stupid and fit in?

Today an entire wing at the mental hospital is populated by math-adept people who finally cracked up under the strain of trying to fit into a math-ignorant society. These folks used to worry about the size of the national debt and funding for government programs. It’s not hard to see what their absence has done to the country. (Trillion-schmillion, whatever…)

Thank heavens, school systems are now run by people who stink at math but who understand the emotional, social, and racial damage that mathematical acuity can produce. Their heroic work in dumbing-down math education and removing its racist flaws is a mission of mercy for millions. Many graduates today might not know what 7×9 equals, but their self-esteem is secure and their sensitivity to other ignorant people – free at last from White Supremacist oppression – is a marvel to behold.

What a blessing to society! They have no idea how lucky they are…