Mathematics Is Not 'White'

By Rick Swenson

 

This is getting ridiculous.

The other day, I read how a math education professor claims that the traditional math curriculum is "white."  I visited her university page to examine her C.V., along with the titles of papers she has published in obscure academic journals no serious person would bother to disassemble.  I discovered that her blossoming career seems hell-bent on challenging classic mathematics as bigoted because – gasp – it heralds such marvelous discoveries of the past two millennia such as the Pythagorean Theorem and the irrational (sic) π, codified by Greeks.  I know that Chinese discoveries of these same truths predate the Greeks, but most Westerners have shallow knowledge of that history.  No matter: Teaching these wonderful human discoveries, according to our lady professor, is "white."  I never knew math cared about your skin pigmentation.  

I'm not shocked by this woman's irritating polemic.  I saw this coming.  I have been in secondary education for over thirty years, and when I started my journey, I was required as part of my master's degree from City College of N.Y. to endure a basket of "education" classes.  A few were dedicated to math instruction in the hardened high schools, and these happily addressed real problems I routinely encountered in my Morris H.S. (near Yankee Stadium) in a devastated quarter of the South Bronx.

But most of the other required education classes I took were silly.  My colleagues in the program agreed.  It was difficult accepting grandiose theories promoted by tenured and crusty professors who themselves had spent marginal time in classrooms with real kids before they escaped to a university education department post to evade the unruly mess.  For two years, every Tuesday and Thursday evening, for two hours, these professors feigned to instruct those of us who daily were front-line in this mangled field.

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Mathematics Is Not 'White'