 

Thread Reader

Holly (Maths Geek)

@hollymathnerd  Subscribe

, 93 tweets, 50 min read  Read on Twitter

 Bookmark  Save as PDF

MATHEMATICS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: a thread. Today is the release date for “Mathematics for Social Justice,” which I am reading and
will live-tweet. If a REALLY LONG thread and/or the topic will annoy you, mute #SJM now. (Pics show you how.) A few people have
asked if I have 1/n

a Patreon. No, but if you’d like to toss extra grocery money at a broke student, my cashapp is $HollyMathNerd, and thank you! Special thanks to
for buying this book so I can entertain myself and hopefully some of y’all. Maths is maths so it really #SJM 2/n
shouldn’t matter, but I’m both anti-Trump and anti-SJW, with views from center left to very left depending on the issue, and I’m doing this because I’ve seen how
much grievance studies has effed up other disciplines and don’t want its identitarian bullshit near mine. #SJM 3/n
Here we go! Review of “Mathematics for Social Justice,” released this very day. I predicted on the record two nights ago. predicted otherwise (pics).
FTR, I’d be delighted to be wrong here. (Relieved beyond words.) Whose guess was shrewd? We’ll find out! #SJM 4/n

The book cover is bland enough to neither offend nor enlighten anyone, multiracial fists of no apparent sex, 3 holding pencils. Statistical likelihood of so many left
handed people in a class is quite low. Portent of things to come or just non-binary representation? ​♀ #SJM 5/n

The book begins with essays from “instructors experienced in integrating social justice themes into their pedagogy” and promises 14 modules for the classroom on
mathematical topics. Will review all the essays and at least the modules in my favorite: #SJM 6/n
calculus and precalculus, and the ones most likely to influence students who aren’t math nerds (maths for the liberal arts, college algebra, and geometry, the stuff a
grievance studies major might take for a maths general Ed requirement.) On to the essays! #SJM 7/n
The preface explains that they got the idea for this book at a 2011 conference and has a bit of a dire warning: "equitable teaching practices" and "misconceptions
about who gets to do mathematics." Mathematics is one of the lowest barrier to entry subjects for students #SJM 8/n

with disadvantaged backgrounds. I'm poor white trash from the blood-red south, went to high school in a church basement, and had no teacher after Algebra 1. I
needed pencils, papers, a calculator, YouTube, and Khan Academy. No lab access, no AP prep courses. "Who gets #SJM 9/n
to do mathematics" is an unnerving phrasing, implying we're about to tread into "poor pitiful girls and non-white people" territory. (If I'm wrong, I will be delighted.)
Preface ends on an ambiguous note: "today's college students deserve to have the mathematical #SJM 10/n
tools to tackle a wider range of real-world problems." If by this they mean that math students should learn rigorous methods, great! I worry they mean something
else. Again, I'll be delighted to be wrong. On to the first essay, written by the co-editors of the book. #SJM 11/n

Essay 1 starts off somewhat promisingly, as if the authors intend only to provide ways to be better maths teachers by helping students use maths in relevant ways
on issues that matter to them, the college student equivalent of teaching a 3rd grader fractions by having #SJM 12/n

her help you make cookies. This quickly breaks down when they start describing the modules to come: "background necessary to understand the context of the
issues and suggestions for relevant data sources." Gosh, I wonder if their context will be biased? I wonder how #SJM 13/n

many conservative (or centrist, for that matter) perspectives will be represented? I wonder how objective the data sources will be? (I have the Social Distortion video
for "I Was Wrong" up in a separate tab because I'm hoping THAT HARD to get to post it, people.) Next, #SJM 14/n
the authors give their definition of social justice. I SERIOUSLY commend their honesty here, as it gives away their biases quite readily. Their definitions start making
assumptions at once: "all mathematics instruction which aims for improved human well-being." #SJM 15/n

If mathematics instruction has any agenda beyond teaching rigorous methods, deductive reasoning, and the reliability of logic and proof as methods of ensuring that
our beliefs align with reality, it ceases to be mathematics and becomes something else. I will argue all #SJM 16/n
day and all night that mathematical knowledge DOES improve human well-being. The Monty Hall Problem is the best example of this for layperson audiences. It
proves that your intuitions are often DEAD WRONG--a powerful and important lesson. What political beliefs you then #SJM 17/n
apply your newfound self-knowledge to? That's not the domain of maths. (Link: montyhallproblem.com ). The rest of the definition in that paragraph is meh, but ok.
The next part of their definition starts off ok, if ambiguous: "individuals and communities...are all #SJM 18/n

guaranteed to have certain fundamental rights." Without enumerating these rights, this means little. If they mean freedom of speech, hooray. If they mean the
guaranteed right to an equal statistical outcome by identity group, no thanks. They end by quoting both #SJM 19/n
the United Nations (who could doubt the wisdom of a body that put Saudi Arabia on its Human Rights Committee, eh?) and Thomas Jefferson, calling his list of
unalienable rights "incomplete." I REALLY wish they'd completed it for President Jefferson. That would've been #SJM 20/n
illuminating, to say the least. Continuing on, they elucidate that they see teaching maths for social justice as involving creating classroom environments where
"social justice is practiced" and "exploring the foundational assumptions of our profession." They don't list #SJM 21/n

what they see these assumptions to be, so I'm going to force myself not to speculate about what they mean by "practicing" social justice in a classroom. Their essay
concludes with something that is actually interesting and intriguing: they promise an essay on what #SJM 22/n

they call "quantitative ethics." We live in a Big Data society and this DOES create many ethical questions. Given how easy it is to lie with statistics (for example, just
leave out Asians when comparing incomes by ethnicity and voila, you have "evidence" for white #SJM 23/n
supremacy! Or leave out first-generation African immigrants, who are more successful than both black Americans and white Americans, on average.) this could be
really good. Or it could be a disaster. We'll see! The module they promise that looks most interesting to me #SJM 24/n
relates to a calculus-based model of a Nicaraguan Coffee Cooperative. I hope it's as cool as it sounds. A pause now while I check my notifications for questions and
read essay 2. Tweet 1 explains how to mute a hashtag if the length or topic is annoying you. #SJM 25/n
And we're back! Essay 2 has very little to quibble with (well, compared to essay 1 anyway), but I'm trying to be as fair and generous as I can, so we'll look at it in
some depth anyway. This thread will likely be 200+ tweets long; if it's annoying, mute #SJM --pics show how. 26/n

Essay 2 tells how the author had an epiphany during Hurricane Katrina. With decades of data available about poverty rates and the way they often correlate to race,
why were Americans so surprised by the carnage? How did they not understand that poverty would, in the #SJM 27/n
face of a disaster, lack the means to flee in time? She felt a responsibility and duty to do something to help her students understand this information better. So far, so
good. She gives her thoughts on the importance of education and cooperation to democracy. Where #SJM 28/n

she gets most interesting is when she freely admits, without caveat, that "many" social scientists in the academy have embraced a role as activists, no longer
seeking to find solutions to our problems but to work to facilitate activism, so to speak. Attn: #SJM 29/n

She elucidates that mathematical knowledge and quantitative reasoning are more important than ever before (I agree with this!) and then goes on to make me laugh
out loud for the first time. She mentions two groups working to increase Americans' quantitative literacy, #SJM 30/n

mentioning that "neither had a specific focus on social justice." YA THINK? It's almost like mathematical rigor requires a dedication to truth, and *real* social justice is
best served by teaching maths and letting a free people argue about their political values among #SJM 31/n

themselves, with the best tools math can give--discipline and logic--to guide them. She ends with her belief that the practice of tracking some students out of the
"algebra-calculus path" in middle and high school functionally tracks them out of STEM paths. I agree with #SJM 32/n

the notion that such decisions require careful thought and planning, but again, this is not definitive. Me. Poor white trash who went to "school" in a church basement.
Internet. Pencils. Majoring in math with a GPA north of 3.0. It takes stubbornness. It's doable. #SJM 33/n
That's it for Essay 2. A pause while I read Essay 3, which is entitled...duhnt duhnt duh!!!!! "Preparing for Student Resistance." #SJM 34/n

Three paragraphs in and we're already talking about Donald Fucking Trump. In an essay about teaching MATHS. #SJM 35/n

OK, Essay 3 is read. My take may be colored by having had to take a couple of mandatory diversity classes, so I want to explicitly invite challenge. If you think I've
got this one wrong, please say so. I'm keeping the main thread for the review but will respond later #SJM 36/n
Essay 3 seems like two things at once to me. One, it's a highly effective manual for how to use your power over students to manipulate them into taking on your own
political views. Two, while I think it probably worked on most students, having had some of these classes, #SJM 37/n
I doubt it worked as well as the author thinks. We all knew what to say when we were forced to speak. Even I only pushed back a little, as it was an easy GPA
booster if one played one's cards right. And from the sound of it, it's not like the students were actually #SJM 38/n
learning any math anyway. OK, here is essay 3, "Preparing for Student Resistance." This was a class for students in a particular college. "Honors" usually refers to
more advanced material, but later she says some students were unsure how to know their checking #SJM 39/n

account balances, so I'm wondering if "Honors" was perhaps a code word for "remedial," or perhaps "social justice based," as she also says the Honors College
motto is "to be honorable is to serve." This course was changed to include lots of discussion and also journal #SJM 40/n

entries to challenge students' views about marginalized groups. This is an endeavor for which students are getting MATHS CREDIT. Three paragraphs in, we had
to start talking about Trump. (Because of course we did.) The anecdote about a "freedom of speech ball" is very #SJM 41/n

telling, in my view. A political candidate came to town and her most salient example of freedom of speech in that situation was not the candidate's speech, nor the
protests, nor the discussions of what he said. It was a child's toy on which people expressed feelings. #SJM 42/n

She describes an incident of a Trump supporter drawing a swastika on the ball and of a black student being asked an insulting question. Taking her account at face
value, these are actually PHENOMENAL examples of free speech. A couple of morons showed themselves to be #SJM 43/n

morons, and nobody got punched, stabbed, shot, or sent to the hospital with a bleeding brain. The insulted student did not burst into tears and was not carried away
to a safe space to color in a coloring book and pet puppies; she responded with more speech. Rather than #SJM 44/n
a celebration--talk about an opening, there was a perfect example of how America was already great--this is presented as an example of how fraught our national
situation is and how the need for instructors to do what she is doing has never been greater. #SJM 45/n

And this, friends, is why I'm spending my day pushing back. What goes on in the described course is what is replacing actual mathematical rigor for students being
specifically prepared to work for changing our society. #SJM 46/n

Take a look at the course objectives. The first half of 1) is fine, of course. 2) is good; if you don't understand interest rates, as one example, you'll perhaps make a
colossal mistake like getting an adjustable rate mortgage. 3) is an eye-roller. Rich people ought to #SJM 47/n

care about income inequality (one of the lessons of history is that when inequality gets bad enough, the poor remember that the rich are, in fact, edible). The poor
already know about it! They can best be helped to no longer be poor by learning ACTUAL MATHS. I am an #SJM 48/n
actual poor person. I sometimes skip lunch to be sure that I won't have a completely hungry day at the end of the month. A teacher who is meant to help me learn
MATHS virtue-signaling how much she cares about the poor does FUCK-ALL to help me change my lot. #SJM 49/n
I'm SURE this teacher has had poor students looking at her thinking, "Bitch, please. STFU; your breath still smells like the sushi you had at your $30 lunch." But I
digress. Sorry. Back to the essay. Now she gets into how she uses her power as a professor to grade to #SJM 50/n
manipulate students into changing their views (or at least, expressing the classroom-approved views, the ones she wants them to hold). Again, this is a course in
MATHS for students who are specifically being educated with an intention to effect societal change. #SJM 51/n

For this MATHS course, the students were required to write journal entries relating to their personal experiences, and graded on completion and "thoughtfulness."
This makes me really angry. It is fair for a professor to require students to elucidate their values and #SJM 52/n
beliefs with regard to the subject matter. Asking for personal journal entries in a MATHS course is bullshit. I'd write fiction. It's none of her fucking business if I'm poor
or if my understanding of welfare comes from reading books or my background. What bullshit. #SJM 53/n
She specifically assigned an initial writing assignment as an ice-breaker to set the stage for making the students vulnerable to how she wanted future topics of
discussion to go. In a COLLEGE MATHS COURSE, she had responses indicating that students didn't know how to #SJM 54/n

figure out their checking account balance or how credit cards worked. This doesn't make them dumb--my parents didn't teach me that stuff either. Some of them
were smart enough to recognize that their ignorance put them at risk of being exploited. But in a MATHS COURSE, #SJM 55/n
this information was just fodder to get them nice and vulnerable for learning about "marginalized groups." How about, IDK, teaching them how credit cards work? But
these journal entries set the stage for classroom discussions of readings about social justice. Here we #SJM 56/n

get into some reasonable ground rules--"no zing," meaning no sarcasm or snappy comebacks, only arguments; using a random number generator to call on
students, a strict attendance policy (gosh, I wonder why she needed that). What follows is what I see as one of the most #SJM 57/n
horrifying aspects of what social justice rhetoric does to classrooms in general. It turns everything into therapy. These kids had to watch a video wherein grieving
mothers discussed the suicide of their children due to credit card debt. Then, unsurprisingly (to me, #SJM 58/n
but then again I'm not statistically illiterate and I'm aware America is having a suicide epidemic) students started talking about people they loved who had died to
suicide, one of which was recent. MATHS TEACHERS ARE NOT THERAPISTS!! I love therapy. My therapist is a #SJM 59/n

genius and if I live to be 200 I will say a grateful prayer every day JUST IN CASE someone's listening. Finding a loved one's suicide is among the things he's
helping me deal with. Are you cringing? You should be. That's a THERAPY TOPIC, not a maths one! For a maths #SJM 60/n
professor to be holding group therapy on suicide instead of, IDK, TEACHING MATHS, is both horrifying and the precise direction this indoctrination shit inevitably
heads in. It is VERY easy to accidentally trigger someone who's struggling (hence the Samaritan #SJM 61/n
guidelines on media reporting of suicide). When everyone is reduced to their identity groups and marginalizations, discussions heading in this direction is inevitable,
and professors ARE NOT QUALIFIED TO DO THIS. Whew. OK, taking a deep breath. #SJM 62/n

Now the professor enlightens us as to how to overcome student resistance. She specifically says that students may resist because "the topic of discussion
contradicts their own beliefs." What follows is a guide to using a power differential to change students' beliefs. #SJM 63/n

I note that the possibility that some of the students' beliefs may be more correct--may better cohere to reality--than the beliefs the professor is invested in changing
their beliefs to is not only never mentioned, it strongly appears to have never been considered. #SJM 64/n
The journal entries were used to force students to reveal their personal feelings about these issues privately so the teacher could "correct" them when they made
"mistakes." Not MATHS mistakes--when they had the wrong views on these social justice issues. Worse, the #SJM 65/n

students who just skipped class were regarded as "resisting" and penalized in their grades. Students with suicidal feelings, depression, or suicide-related grief
skipping a class where an unqualified person conducts group therapy on this topic are being RATIONAL. #SJM 66/n

The last type of resistance, vocal resistance, is addressed with a charming anecdote. She had students write about one of "six principles of fairness in lending." The
six were: responsibility, justice, equality, information, accountability, and law & enforcement. A #SJM 67/n
few students she identifies as white, male, and middle-class wrote about responsibility. She had already planned to show "Maxed Out," a video about how easily
debt can become insurmountable, and when these students vocally changed their view on responsibility, this was #SJM 68/n

a great success. Essay 3 ends with the obligatory moralizing on privilege and how college professors are just the ones to fix this. #SJM 69/n
Two more essays and then I'll look at some (NOT ALL) of the "teaching modules" to evaluate how rigorous the maths they provide for professors to use in the
classroom actually is. Should I do a second thread, or does it even matter at this point? #SJM 70/n
Short lunch break--if you're getting annoyed, please feel free to mute #SJM -- these pics show you how. It'll be pinned to my profile for future perusal. #SJM 71/n

Time for Essay 4! Tweets 1, 26, and 71 have pictures to show how to mute a hashtag. Essay 4 is fairly banal and uninteresting, so this will be short. The authors tie
issues of climate change and sustainability to social justice by discussing the future impact on people #SJM 72/n
not yet born. They argue for a view of all problems as inherently complicated and complex, everything affecting everything else--what my grandmother called "the
law of unintended consequences." The idea that some of the solutions called for by the social justice left #SJM 73/n

might have unintended consequences doesn't get addressed, but other than that omission, I have no real issue with it. Their purpose seems to be to break down
the inclination that maths professors may have to be one-discipline-focused. There is an opportunity cost #SJM 74/n
to bringing anything other than maths into the course. Maths is hard. I work my ass off and A's are elusive anyway. There is never enough time, and even fellow
students a lot smarter than me hold this view. But, whatever. This one is just sort of meh. The last essay is #SJM 75/n
on "quantitative ethics." Going to pause and read it now. Then I'll evaluate a few of the teaching modules they provide for rigor. #SJM 76/n
A small error--there are TWO more essays at this point, not three. (This is a genuine experiment. I'm not reading ahead.) When the authors said in Essay 1 that there
were 5 essays, they meant "5 more, not counting this one." They're both pretty short, though. #SJM 77/n
Essay 5 opens with an anecdote about the media using a misleading bar graph in a story and how it gave the author an epiphany. He wants to not just teach
students to spot lies told with statistics, but to become ethical PRODUCERS, not just consumer, of quantitative #SJM 78/n
information. Fair enough. There's nothing explicitly objectionable in this one--but there's something horrifying in what he doesn't say. He never says he's teaching
students that things like avoiding confirmation bias and being willing to use the best data available, #SJM 79/n
even if it contradicts their cherished beliefs, are important. He seems content to just get students to think about these issues, not come to a conclusion about
responsible vs. irresponsible use of data and quantitative knowledge. And some of his students are in need #SJM 80/n

of this--the attached anecdote being horrifying but not at all surprising. He teaches maths to business majors who aren't good at math, and the credit card problem is
actually a good one. Is it ethical to allow customers the option of a minimum payment so low that they #SJM 81/n

will literally never get out of debt? That's a good question. He finishes with a discussion of how the "independence assumption" in mortgage lending helped cause
the 2008 crisis--again, a good thing to think about. I have little issue with what he says but a lot with #SJM 82/n
what he doesn't say--that it's important students learn not just to think about these things, to *recognize* them, but to come to ethical conclusions. Perhaps that's all
there in the subtext and my horror at essay 3 still has me reeling. I hope so. One more essay! #SJM 83/n

The last essay is pretty short, and so will my treatment of the modules be, since I'd have to teach math to many of you in order for my assessment to TRULY make
sense. Thanks for hanging in there with me--in other words, we're almost done! #SJM 84/n
Whoo! The final essay gives me what I wanted--the chance to be wrong. This one is actually really good. The professor has an approach to getting students to
approach social justice issues with maths that, while far from perfect, is actually, in my view, a net positive. #SJM 85/n
Before I commence praising him, let's all take a moment to enjoy a musical interlude. Here's Social Distortion with "I Was Wrong."

#SJM 86/n
The author teaches maths to liberal arts majors who hate maths, so he, through trial and error, designed a course to teach them based on "What do I want the
person voting in the next booth to understand?" A course that used this for real issues, like the non-existent #SJM 87/n
wage gap sucking up so much attention, would get the author the treatment, so I can't blame him for going at it differently. He starts with an
anecdote about how he realized he was failing his students in this regard via a 2008 news story. #SJM 88/n

From there, they examined the math behind news items like the tax rates POTUS candidates *actually* pay and how Medicare growth rates affect the time until its
projected bankruptcy. All of this strikes me as more good than bad since he doesn't say that they #SJM 89/n

got into the politics of it more than peripherally. This is good. This is education, not indoctrination, at least as far as I can tell. A break while I read the modules and
decide which ones to comment on. I'll probably just pick a few, "grade" them on rigor, and #SJM 90/n
perhaps give a few examples. Thanks again for sticking with me through this (assuming anyone is actually still reading.) #SJM 91/n

I am starting a NEW THREAD to evaluate the rigor of the mathematics and the nature/biases of the political content in the "teaching modules." Hashtag will stay the
same and numbering will pick up at 93. #SJM 92/n
#SJM supplementary Second thread, evaluating the teaching modules, is here:

External Tweet loading...

If nothing shows, it may have been deleted
https://twitter.com/hollymathnerd/status/1149009340763910144?s=21

 Tweet  Share  Email

Like this thread? Get email updates or save it to PDF!

Subscribe to Holly (Maths Geek)

Get real-time email alerts when new unrolls are available from this author!

 Subscribe

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

1) Follow

2) Go to a T

You can
Related hashtags
#SJM

Related threads

Trending hashtags

  Help | About | TOS | Privacy

 Tweet  Share