NOTE: special thanks to Dr. Philip S. Mirci of the University of Redlands’ School of Education for tuning me up to understand this stuff.
I need to address an "article" that one of our school counselors sent me regarding our draft Revised Mathematics Framework in California, which will most likely be put in play come July of 2022. I’m not linking to the article because it’s AWFUL and I don’t want to promote it in any way. But it’s written by a right wing…sorry…independent propaganda and economic lobby, advised by the likes of …
Fox News analyst and financial advisor Larry Kudlow
Libertarian political satirist P.J. O’Rourke
An Antonin Scalia fan-boy law professor named Todd J. Zywicki
Professor of law…in Belgium, Boudewjin R. A. Bouckaert
Founder of a multi-national finance magazine, Paul H. Weaver.
The name of the article is “Replace the Proposed New California Math Curriculum Framework: Open Letter to Governor Gavin Newsome, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, the State Board of Education, and the Instructional Quality Commission” and it’s written by Independent Institute.
TRIGGER WARNING: if you're one of these folks that think the old ways are juuuuuuust fine, you'z gonna get triggered.
First, let's look at who we're lookin' at. The Independent Institute. Nah, we're not going to rely on their mission statement. Let's just take a look at the Independent Institute's Board of Directors:
1. Founder of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, providing assurance and risk advisory services. Basically, a company that makes sure their client companies are protected from pesky lawsuits that protect people from being treated inhumanely and getting ripped off. To be clear, the company does not protect the people; they protect the companies from liability. They’re an international management consulting firm. You know...folks that obviously care about California's children.
2. President of a four-person professional services company in Massachusetts working on public relations, legal services, consulting services.
3. Gary G. Schlarbaum. A private investor. Period.
4. Co-founder of a patient intake computer platform based out of New York City.
5. Chairman and CEO of the Berkeley Research Group. Hey! Finally! Some science and engineering, right? From California even, right!?
Wrong! ;^0)
They’re a global consulting firm that helps organizations with disputes and investigations, corporate finance, business strategy and operations, etc. You know: the sort of bona fides you WANT in folks trying to shape how and what children learn (Grrrr!)
You see the point? The Independent Institute is a Libertarian “non-profit” “think tank” designed to push pro-business and pro-enslavement thinking across the world as well as to make plenty of profit for them and theirs, despite the whole non-profit thing. Ya see, some of these sorts of get-ups are run by the very companies they’re supporting! Shhhhh.
NOT A SINGLE EDUCATOR, PSYCHOLOGIST, MATHMATEICIAN, ENGINEER, HISTORIAN. No. They’re a sub-rosa advocacy group that consults with companies to make them and their clients obscene profits by providing industry-funded research attestations customized to be EXACTLY what their supported projects need , while exploited employees around America have to take loans to send their kids to college. They then offer Advisory Seats to university professors (from Stanford to UCLA on down to Azusa Pacific University and De Anza Community College) to allow their names to be printed as an Advisor on their website. Essentially, the professors sell their respective university’s credibility for a buck (and god knows, they need it—professors don’t make much).
So guess what their priorities are: not how students learn math; not how math teaches reasoning skills to liberate a student from a pedagogy of oppression; not what CALIFORNIA needs.
They just want more coders--low-level employees that they can exploit and entice with incremental status upgrades ("You're now the SENIOR software engineer. What an accomplishment?!"). Sure. It’s a living. But it’s also the perpetuation of an enslaving, machine-minded entrainment campaign that keeps middle and lower class Americans working ‘til the day they die and equips them with the critical thinking skills of a carrot.
But let me get to the more important matter--why I'm so peeved about this anti- political correctness stance. Look, we all understand that education is NOT politically free (and NEVER has been), given that all philosophical approaches are political, by nature. Through socialization in schools, there's MUCH more happening than becoming proficient in science, math, or English.
But these "free market thinkers" that promote a back-to-basics mentality are simply Conservative Essentialists. They want American education to transmit a static, orderly view of reality to students and for that order and structure to be primarily perpetuating their social, economic, and cultural status quo. It’s a politically conservative view that sees education’s primary function to be the facilitation of the transmission of approved knowledge by and values of the historically dominant ethnic/racial culture.
For example, to the Essentialist, history is something that “happened in the past”. An example is the issue of racism. Students may study the Civil Rights Movement as an historical event occurring at a moment in time. However, the continued problem of racism today doesn’t get addressed as a contemporary problem. Just do a search on YouTube [school board crt] for an example of how the dominant ethnic cultures have tried to suppress the history of chattel slavery and institutional racism belying the core of our nation.
Moron Essentialism. Sorry. More on Essentialism…
Essentialists emphasize the basics (or essentials) and include the prevailing moral and religious predilections of northern European, Protestant, or other Reformationist Christians. They value mono-culturalism and devalue multi-culturalism. They aim to infuse the values and beliefs of the dominant ethno-racial culture into the education system. So, the call to go “back to basics” doesn’t reflect the claim that reading, writing, and mathematics have been abandoned. It’s just a veiled attempt at fortifying the indoctrination of America’s students as the cogs of future revenue streams—for the rich (Elon Musk $398B; Jeff Bezos $200B; Bernard Arnault $237B; Bill Gates $146B; Larry Page $177B; Mark Zuckerberg $97B, etc.)
Another reason why articles like the one I’m criticizing are written is that Essentialists want to silence social justice pursuits so they maintain the status quo in society. Gutek and Gutek (1998) listed a number of common, unfounded claims made by Conservative Essentialists:
1. Permissive, open, and progressive educational methods have neglected basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and have contributed to a growing functional illiteracy.
2. Schools do not stress fundamental values of industriousness, punctuality, effort, morality, or patriotism.
3. Teachers are ill prepared and undereducated.
4. Recent curricular innovations have neglected fundamental skills and subjects.
5. Social-promotion policies rather than academic achievement have dumped ill-prepared and undereducated high school graduates on society and the economy.
6. Schools have been used for social engineering and experimentation rather than for basic education. Administrators and teachers perform so many non-educational functions that they neglect the basics.
7. Educational expenses could be contained by reducing nonacademic frills, eliminating electives, and concentrating on required basic skills and subjects This is a claim of eliminating an enriched curriculum for the poor that is offered to students of more advantaged schools.
8. Permissive policies have contributed to violence and vandalism in the schools.
9. Minority groups such as African Americans and Hispanics have been short-changed by the schools with respect to instruction in the basic skills.
10. U. S. industrial and business productivity has been reduced by undereducated graduates who cannot perform fundamental skills, who cannot read or write effectively, and who lack productive work skills and habits.
There you have it. Ten critiques of America's public education system and how it's TOO socially just. One thing though…as Dr. Mirci would say: Where is the empirical evidence to support ANY of these claims? Sure, one can point to anecdotal evidence here and there which may illustrate any of the claims above. But because some educator or education agency somewhere in the USA does something that plays into these claims doesn’t make the claims themselves valid or some folksy-wise, git-down for the entire country?!
You see the point?
Whenever a competing philosophy emerges to the point of threatening Essentialism, the system resists, resulting in the call for “back to basics”. They argue, erroneously, that scholastic standards have fallen, academic rigor and sequence are absent in most schools, and that there needs to be a return to essential skills and subjects. They even attribute rising crime rates to lack of discipline and lack of standards in the schools. Essentialists, like the Independent Institute (sheesh), contend that the nation’s education systems have eroded because of permissivism and progressivism.
But because they’re blinded by the light of the almighty dollar, their idea of transmitting Eurocentric curriculum and “correct attitudes” reflecting the mono-culturalism of those possessing the dominant power in society from one generation to another is increasingly problematic for everyone. With the burgeoning of new knowledge in contemporary society, this backward-thinking is contributing to the slowness of educational change.
Why? Because…
…Essentialism is obsolete in its authoritarian tendencies.
Peter Drucker, an educator and one of the foremost systemic organization management theorists of our time, coined the term “knowledge worker” to emphasize the need to teach students how to think, evaluate information, and generate new knowledge. You would think that those skills are already valued in our education system. But you’d be wrong.
Objections and Direct Rebuttals
Now, just to be fair, let’s consider the claims that the Independent Institute objects to in the revisions to our math framework. First, here are the State's recommended changes:
California’s Instructional Quality Commission’s (IQC) goal was to revise the Mathematics Framework to address ways curriculum can meet the needs of as many students as possible, making math more accessible, and to provide research and guidance so schools can make the best local decisions that provide options and improve math outcomes for all students.
They recommended the addition of an appendix that includes learning progressions, adding guidance on providing adequately- challenging instructional opportunities and differentiation. They also recommended the removal of reference to a report called "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction", and providing additional information regarding the specific needs of various students.
Further, the IQC discussions underscored that the decision about acceleration/honors and AP courses is a local one and requested that the next draft include specific guidance on acceleration (including middle school acceleration) and serving high achievers and gifted students.
Now, let’s take a look at the objections of the Independent Institute:
The institute refers to trauma-informed pedagogy as “fringe teaching”. Fringe. Understanding how trauma may’ve effected students’ learning readiness is…a fringy teaching thing (palm to the forehead!).
Trauma-informed pedagogy in mathematics highlights the importance of allowing students to identify and express their feelings as part of mathematics sense-making, and to allow students to address what they learn about their world by suggesting recommendations and taking action. Doesn’t that sound HORRIBLE (he said sarcastically)?
They claim the framework distracts from “actual” mathematics by assigning students tasks that will solve problems that result in social inequalities.
Forgive us dumb teachers for thinking that math should have some relevance to students’ lives. A relevant task invites students to solve problems that are meaningful to them; that relate to their lives or pique their interests. When tasks have cultural relevance, they help students to affirm and appreciate their own culture and the cultures of others. Tasks that help students develop critical consciousness are those that give students the opportunity to understand, critique and solve the problems that result in societal inequalities. Is that so wrong? We don’t want problem solvers?
The institute claims that the revisions urge teachers to take a justice-oriented perspective at any grade level, K–12 and explicitly reject the idea that mathematics itself is a “neutral discipline.”
And they're right. The revisions do urge justice-oriented instruction. You know why? BECAUSE WE’RE A JUSTICE-ORIENTED NATION. Look, the revised frameworks’ perspective enables teachers to not only help their students see themselves inside mathematics, but develop knowledge and understanding that allows them to use mathematics toward betterment in their worlds. Teachers can take a justice-oriented perspective at any grade level because doing so helps students feel belonging and empowers them with tools to address important issues in their lives and communities.
NOTE: check out this resource presenting six articles written by educators who are involved with teaching and learning mathematics from a social justice perspective.
The institute objects to the revised framework because it rejects ideas of natural gifts and talents. They erroneously claim that the new framework discourages accelerating talented mathematics students—which is patently false.
Since the development of the 2013 Mathematics Framework, we’ve learned to have informed local conversations about how to best serve high achieving students. The draft Mathematics Framework concludes that students can achieve high levels of math competency if they have access to effective mathematics teaching and learning, which also fosters a growth mindset. However, just as with other student groups, high achieving students can be underserved or marginalized. All students deserve powerful mathematics and as such, we Californians REJECT the cult of the genius.
The institute also claims the framework encourages keeping all students together in the same math program until the 11th grade and argues that offering differentiated programs causes student “fragility” and racial animosity. Did you hear that? That’s called a dog whistle.
In previous versions of the framework, students who have shown higher achievement than their peers have been given fixed labels of “giftedness” and taught differently. Such labelling has often led to fragility among students, who fear times of struggle in case they lose the label (see, for example: https://www.youcubed.org/rethinking-giftedness-film/), as well as significant racial divisions. In California in the years 2004–2014, 32 % of Asian American students were in gifted programs compared with 8% of “White” students, 4% of “Black” students, and 3% of Latinx students (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_204.80.asp).
While many districts have moved away from such labelling and the resulting differential treatment, students who achieve at high levels can still suffer from a faster paced (and often shallower) mathematics experience—one that does not lead to depth of understanding or appreciation of the content. The legacy of mathematics education as both “mental training” and as a sort-of access code for higher education have undercut meaningful learning, reducing mathematics to a high-stakes performance for the college-bound student, and as an arbitrary hurdle for all others.
So, colleagues, I hope you’ll join me in pushing back on the blather spewing out of the mouths of Essentialists/Conservatives by vehemently negating the claim that the purpose of education is to perpetuate the status quo by transmitting a body of information and ensuring the perpetuation of mono-culturalism. It’s the EXACT opposite. Here in America, we’re a multi-cultural society. The “back to basics” cry is a way of saying that the Essentialist’s cultural heritage is being threatened.
It is being threatened. By progress.