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Math is systematic racism

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CLAX1911 said:
I think it's even more than a virtue signal I think these people are appointing themselves as spokes persons for various minority groups. They will find offensive things that don't offend me and they pretend they are doing it on my behalf.

Where yes it is a virtue signal and it is self-centered it is also bigotry

People who are good at math especially higher math are typically very well aware of how difficult it is to learn. I don't think people are incapable of it I think the tendency to make mistakes has the effect of making people feel stupid, when that's not the case you just accept your mistakes and correct them.
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I was trained as a scientist but tended to things like biochemistry because it requires the least math.
But I think I cheated myself because there is a beauty in math that transcends everything and if there are aliens then we can probably relate with them through mathematics.
As far as virtue signaling and spokesmanship go. To me it is simple arrogance and a need to control others.
 
Sagittarius83 said:
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I was trained as a scientist but tended to things like biochemistry because it requires the least math.
But I think I cheated myself because there is a beauty in math that transcends everything and if there are aliens then we can probably relate with them through mathematics.
As far as virtue signaling and spokesmanship go. To me it is simple arrogance and a need to control others.
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Mathematics are very elegant and there is very much a beauty in it. I'm not trained in higher math beyond trigonometry. I've been a technical worker all my life and I have used these things in my work.

I think spokesmanship is about keeping people corralled.
 
CLAX1911 said:
Mathematics are very elegant and there is very much a beauty in it. I'm not trained in higher math beyond trigonometry. I've been a technical worker all my life and I have used these things in my work.

I think spokesmanship is about keeping people corralled.
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Trigonometry and calculus were my favorites.

It seems like there are three types of people in the world; those who are never secure unless they are controlling others, those that feel secure being controlled and those that defy the other two in their independence and they are the least in number and most distrusted by the first two.
 
Sagittarius83 said:
Trigonometry and calculus were my favorites.

It seems like there are three types of people in the world; those who are never secure unless they are controlling others, those that feel secure being controlled and those that defy the other two in their independence and they are the least in number and most distrusted by the first two.
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Trig was difficult but utterly invaluable. I can't imagine my work without it

That's a very good point.
 
Sagittarius83 said:
Trigonometry and calculus were my favorites.

It seems like there are three types of people in the world; those who are never secure unless they are controlling others, those that feel secure being controlled and those that defy the other two in their independence and they are the least in number and most distrusted by the first two.
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I never got to calculus
 
Math seems to be harder for certain demographics for whatever reason.

This all reminds me of a very small child trying to play checkers and losing and then responding by kicking the board and sending the pieces flying.

That type of behavior is somehow unacceptable for a child but somehow enshrined in righteous acceptability by the educational and sociological communities.

This insane attitude toward math is not shared by anyone outside the US but I am sure it is being viewed as America getting softer and softer by it’s enemies.
 
Sagittarius83 said:
Math can be difficult but it is objective.

I wonder if these people who make sweeping generalizations were also bad at math.
If I am driving over a bridge I would rather have it designed by someone with a firm grasp of mathematics than one whose training was more grounded in social justice.

Calculus is as true in the American inner cities as it is in it’s most affluent suburbs. If some group has difficulty understanding or doing it then that group needs to be better taught. Here we don’t put up with mathematical ignorance. But they have to be expected to put it in the effort to learn how to do hard things and not coddled into believing that all their failure is due to prejudice. This is lazy and societally dangerous thinking. In fact it is reckless.

You don’t just shout racism and call it a day!
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We need more lesbian of color slam poets designing bridges. Patriarchal white men don’t know what they’re doing and besides if you want a safe bridge that’s just because you’re a white supremacist.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
We need more lesbian of color slam poets designing bridges. Patriarchal white men don’t know what they’re doing and besides if you want a safe bridge that’s just because you’re a white supremacist.
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It gets way more ridiculous than this. I remember watching this podcast for the life of me I cannot find but it was quite delicious. It was basically a group of people saying that all science in general was white supremacist and patriarchy.

The speaker made the claim that some tribal form of folk healing was to strum a lute over an ailing part of the body is just as legitimate as Western medicine and it's only because of white supremacy and patriarchy that we discount the healing powers of proximity lute strumming. Further the only reason we didn't research the medicinal value of plucking strings to heal was because of white supremacy.

Basically saying this sort of practice doesn't just need academic inspection from a strictly anthropological point of view but scientific as well.

I say encourage it. I remember hearing about this scumbag preacher and how he eats apricot pits buy them by the pound in fact because he thinks he needs vitamin b17. Basically apple seeds and cherry pits apricot seeds and so forth contain a substance called amygdalin which in your buddy turns into cyanide. I encourage this.
 
Grand Mal said:
So if you only look at Americans who score well, then America has a high score. Kinda like taking the top dozen cities out of violent crime stats and finding that the US is another Norway.
Canada is an ethnically and culturally diverse nation with probably the same poverty rate but Canada scores consistently higher, 12 in math, 9 in science and 6 in reading.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Programme for International Student Assessment - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

Obviously Canadian kids are no more intelligent than Americans so the difference must be in the teachers. I can't speak from direct experience (you maybe could though) but from what I gather teaching Isn't highly valued. An education degree is considered Mickey Mouse. I've heard of such poor support that they buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets.
In Finland you need a Masters degree before you can start teaching.

edit- and we're talking public education systems, right? Not the elite private schools that the upper classes send their kids to. That's another thing Finland doesn't have.
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Yeah, except that Canada is “diverse” in the sense that Canada brain drains the top of society from British commonwealth countries.
 
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CLAX1911 said:
It gets way more ridiculous than this. I remember watching this podcast for the life of me I cannot find but it was quite delicious. It was basically a group of people saying that all science in general was white supremacist and patriarchy.

The speaker made the claim that some tribal form of folk healing was to strum a lute over an ailing part of the body is just as legitimate as Western medicine and it's only because of white supremacy and patriarchy that we discount the healing powers of proximity lute strumming. Further the only reason we didn't research the medicinal value of plucking strings to heal was because of white supremacy.

Basically saying this sort of practice doesn't just need academic inspection from a strictly anthropological point of view but scientific as well.

I say encourage it. I remember hearing about this scumbag preacher and how he eats apricot pits buy them by the pound in fact because he thinks he needs vitamin b17. Basically apple seeds and cherry pits apricot seeds and so forth contain a substance called amygdalin which in your buddy turns into cyanide. I encourage this.
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Lutes are cheap while pharmaceutical research is expensive, it’s just big pharma suppressing Lutes. Pfizer bought out all the lute doctors.

We will have to make Pfizer employ a cross dressing Eskimo latinX lute studies major, to bring down the systems of oppression that lead to lute Americans of color being oppressed by white “medicine” with its so called “science”.
 
Grand Mal said:
And no separating the quick learners and the slow learners from the average.
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How does that benefit quick learners?

Teaching is a prestigious, well-paid profession there. You need a Masters degree. That right there might be the main reason they're so successful. Nobody considers education a Mickey Mouse degree.
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Successful regarding what? Finns are poor compared to Americans. Their average disposable household income is only 29k per year, compared to 45k for the US.
 
aociswundumho said:
How does that benefit quick learners?



Successful regarding what? Finns are poor compared to Americans. Their average disposable household income is only 29k per year, compared to 45k for the US.
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Can you give me the sources on those numbers? Because Finland is a far more income equal society than the United States. So if those are gross on a adjusted averages, then what you’re really saying is America has far more super wealthy people and most Americans have it at least equal or less than fins.
 
aociswundumho said:
Sure, I got them from here:

OECD Better Life Index

www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org

OECD Better Life Index

www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org
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Ok so with a brief overview of their methodology it appears these numbers are averages over the whole society.

So me, making 70K a year, am lumped in with say President Biden who’s salary is 450,000 a year. So what we have here is the fact that because America is far more unequal in income there’s a bias upwards.

Finland has a much smaller population and fewer really wealthy people. So someone in your social class in Finland is not making 29 thousand in income to your 46.
 
Sagittarius83 said:
To me this just reinforces my firm belief that any disparity in success between any two groups in any task is now de facto evidence of some kind of -ism
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It’s statements like these that tell us we’re on to something.
 
aociswundumho said:
How does that benefit quick learners?



Successful regarding what? Finns are poor compared to Americans. Their average disposable household income is only 29k per year, compared to 45k for the US.
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I don't know how it benefits quick learners, just that the most successful education system in the western world does it that way.
Do you know how averages work? Dividing a million dollars by a thousand people doesn't mean each person has a thousand dollars, not if three of them have two hundred thousand each.
 
Sagittarius83 said:
Math seems to be harder for certain demographics for whatever reason.

This all reminds me of a very small child trying to play checkers and losing and then responding by kicking the board and sending the pieces flying.

That type of behavior is somehow unacceptable for a child but somehow enshrined in righteous acceptability by the educational and sociological communities.

This insane attitude toward math is not shared by anyone outside the US but I am sure it is being viewed as America getting softer and softer by it’s enemies.
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I have dyscalculia so learning math was a nightmare. I learned 3 years of math in several months once I was able to use a special system.

Trying to reach some kids can be hard. If there are barriers to prevent kids from learning and we can remove those barriers to make it easier for them to not be afraid to engage in math that is the point.

I appreciate the wording with educators is full of theoretical assumptions and references but truthfully most of it is political virtue signalling. Teachers in inner city schools, teachers in schools with huge drug and crime problems, they know damn well they can't teach children math the way its done in China.

There are cultural barriers, call them what you want but they are reality. How to deal with them is crucial.

Not all minds work the same. In educational curriculum design, the most effective ones try use a diverse range of learning approaches not just one.

All that said this should not be a political issue about affirmative action gone too far. Its not. Its about finding new ways to get kids not to be turned off by math.

I have 5 university degrees and was labelled a retard in school for not being able to do math like other kids. I can not help wonder what would have happened if in the school I was in I was not streamed into the retard math class. That's what they called us.

Anything to do with numbers to this day I can't grasp like most. I need to use colour or feel size difference or use special pictures to understand math. Excel sheets are a nightmare unless every colour is different and has a large enough space in between it.

Some kids come from homes where no one in their home reads or writes or can do math. It means they have no one to go home to and ask for help on homework particularly if their home is problematic to start with.

Those kinds of things are what we deal with.
 
@Mika-El
I appreciate this and understand the special learning needs of some people.

But the west faces an existential educational threat from the rest of the world.

China is not loaded down with the PC needs and honors special gifts from it’s gifted students.

So I say let’s focus on training special needs students but don’t let it interfere with raising gifted students to their full potential.

Better yet let’s stop making excuses for poor performance based on unmerited claims of racism.

It serves no one.
 
It is great to find new ways to teach kids. I hope when we do that its not based on some specific adult's hair brained notion of what discrimination is and their need to impose an agenda that has nothing to do with the kids.

Some parents make excuses for their children's fialure, others seek answers for their children's limitations. There's a difference and that difference is what determines often how valid the solution is. Sometimes the former dominate the conversation and prevent us from getting to the root cause of the limitations and stop at surface politics of the parents not the deep rooted limitations of the child caused by something neurological.
 
Sagittarius83 said:
Yes, please let’s have a definition of liberal.
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I think you know as well as I do that there are many definitions of that slippery word 'liberal'. In New Modern English, say around 1600 it simply meant generous.
 
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