Hello, I’m Daisy Cousens.
Welcome to This Week in Social Justice.
INTRO
This week’s biggest and baddest social justice fails are the Seattle
school district and it’s plan to infuse all K-12 maths classes with
ethnic studies, the latest case of Trump Derangement Syndrome in
the mainstream media after their reaction to the Daily Wire dog
meme, and depending on how long I feel like talking about the first
two topics, we may even get time for a bonus topic.
So!
Let’s get started.
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We’re all painfully aware of how schools have been sneakily
integrating social justice rhetoric into the classroom.
Whether it’s climate change alarmist, radical gender theory,
or making white boys
feel like crap, stories are constantly popping up of this regressive
leftist agenda entering the school curriculum.
Even in mathematics.
Yep, even the subject that has zero to do with society and cultural
issues, has somehow been turned into a society and cultural issue.
The Seattle school district is planning to integrate all K-12 maths
classes with ethnic-studies questions, designed to encourage
students to explore how maths has been “appropriated” by Western
culture and used in systems of power and oppression.
At the moment, the plan is still in the proposal stage, but if the
frameworks are approved, then teachers will be expected to
incorporate the ideas and questions outlined within the framework
in the mathematics they teach starting next Autumn.
So, why on earth would maths, of all things, need any
kind of ethnic studies attached to it?
Well, according to Tracy Castro-Gill, Seattle’s ethnic studies director,
when too many black and Latino students apparently see no place
for themselves in math and science, it’s important to be explicit
about how their own cultures contribute to maths and how they can
use it to make their communities, and the world, better.
In addition, a “top official” at a mathematics organisation, who
agreed to talk to Education Week magazine about this on the
condition of anonymity, stated,
“We all want students of color to be included, believe they can learn
math, and see themselves as mathematicians,” “It’s important for
them to learn about great contributions to mathematics from all
cultures—Indian and Chinese and Babylonian.”
Okay, so, what’s being proposed here seems to have more of a place
in a history class than in maths.
I mean, I was terrible at maths when I was at school, like so bad, but even I could
see that the purpose of maths was to teach us practical numerical
skills that would prepare us for problems we would face when we left
school and headed into the real world.
Why on earth would this ethnomathematics, to use the technical
term, be in any way appropriate to include in that learning process?
Well, according to the four-page proposal, there are many reasons
this would be appropriate.
The proposal has four key “themes”, which are origins, identity, and
agency, power and oppression, history of resistance and liberation,
and reflection and action.
Attached to those themes are various learning targets, and of course, essential
questions.
Now, I’m not going to take you through the entirety of that proposal,
although I have included it in the video description, I recommend
you read the whole thing.
But just to give you a taste, here is the description of the power and oppression theme
“Power and oppression, as defined by ethnic studies, are the ways in
which individuals and groups define mathematical knowledge so as
to see “Western” mathematics as the only legitimate expression of
mathematical identity and intelligence.
This definition of legitimacy is then used to disenfranchise people and communities
of color.
This erases the historical contributions of people
and communities of color.”
Okay, so it had never occurred to me that there was such a thing as
mathematical identity, but in this brave new world of identity
politics, I guess it stands to reason that somebody would find a way
to make maths racist.
Anyway, the learning targets of the power and oppression theme
include, and I quote; to analyze the ways in which ancient
mathematical knowledge has been appropriated by Western culture,
identify how math has been and continues to be used to oppress and
marginalize people and communities of color,
and explain how math and technology and/or science are connected
and how technology and/or science have been and continues to be
used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color.
These learning outcomes also encourage students to identify the
inherent inequities of the standardized testing system used to
oppress and marginalize people and communities of color, and
explain how math dictates economic oppression.
And as for the essential questions connected to this theme, the most
astounding of these are how is math manipulated to allow inequality
and oppression to persist, who gets to say if an answer is right, and
can you recognize and name oppressive mathematical practices in
your experience?
Now, I think I’m stating the obvious here that this is identity politics
on steroids.
There is no single practical advantage that I can think of
attached to teaching students that maths is somehow a tool of
Western oppression.
It’s maths.
Aside for that; how profoundly racist are these virtue signalling
educators if they think the only way non-white students can feel
comfortable learning maths, do well at it, or see themselves as
mathematicians, is by bending over backwards to make semantic
concessions for them.
Enormous social justice fail on this one.
And now for the topic you’ve all been waiting for; the Donald Trump
dog meme.
The mainstream media has really outdone itself over the
past week with its hysterical reaction to something clearly intended
to be a very sweet joke.
As I’m sure you all know, on October 29, Donald Trump tweeted a photo of the beautiful
dog that was injured in the al-Baghdadi raid
saying the dog is wonderful and did a great job.
Anyway, on October 30 th , The Daily Wire, a conservative online
publication, tweeted this; a very obvious photoshop job of this
beautiful doggie being presented with a hero’s medal, and the
caption “Please @realDonaldTrump”.
Needless to say, Trump loved this adorable meme.
And, since he is the King of Twitter, he of course tweeted
it himself, as a sweet little joke, with the caption, in capitals, AMERICAN
HERO!
Now, every normal, sensible person with a basic understanding
of technology looked at this, with the very obviously photoshopped
silhouette, and though, aw, what a cute meme, that’s adorable.
However, apparently there are some people out there who just hate
Donald Trump so damn much, that they jumped straight to the
collective conclusion that he was faking a medal ceremony for the
dog in order to mislead the public, and started spewing it all over the
internet.
No joke.
Like this guy here
“There was no medal ceremony for that dog today.
Trump is making fake news.
The picture is photoshopped.
It is more than obvious that Trump will lie about everything.”
Hence the ratio
Anyway, it turns out an embarrassingly large amount of these people
on the regressive left who thought this was real rather than a meme
are in the media.
Multiple journalists contacted the White House to
verify if the photo was real or photoshopped.
Despite the fact the image has the Daily Wire watermark on it,
and the fact the emblem on the medal is in the shape of
a dog’s paw
Jim Acosta of the New York Times was, of course, one of those
journalists.
As was Steve Herman of Voice Of America, who was
stringent enough in his journalism to not only clarify with the White
House that there was no such canine event on that that day, but to
also put out an ten tweet thread describing the situation.
Then, there were the headlines
Possibly the funniest interaction was between Chief Operating
Officer of the Daily Wire Jeremy Boreing and Alex Horton of the
Washington Post.
Poor Alex emailed Jeremy, stating
“Hello, I’m with the Washington Post, and wanted to get
confirmation this photo originated with you, and if it did, that you
digitally removed Medal of Honor recipient James McCloughan and
replaced him with a dog”
To which Jeremy responded
“Alex, On the record: You’ve got to be fucking joking.
Please quote me on that.
Thanks, Jeremy”
Speaking of the actual Medal of Honor recipient, James McCloughan,
whose photo was photoshopped, the New York Times, fretting about
the fact he had been replaced with a dog, actually contacted him for
comment.
If they were hoping for James to be outraged that his
photo had been altered in this way, and rant about how disrespectful
Donald Trump was being to vets, they were sorely disappointed.
James McCloughan laughed when he saw the photo, and interpreted
it as Trump recognizing the dog’s heroism.
He certainly was not offended.
After all, he said, Medal of Honor recipients accept on
behalf of their entire teams, especially those that did not return from
battle.
And canines have long been part of war efforts.
He said it recognizes the dog is part of that team of brave people,
and commented on how courageous these army dogs are, as he had
worked with one during the Vietnam War.
Okay, here’s the thing.
It’s very easy to laugh at this situation, I mean,
it’s funny.
These mainstream media journos are either so lacking in a sense of
humour that they genuinely thought Trump was trying to mislead the
public with this photo, or they were perfectly aware that it was a
meme, but wanted to mislead the public themselves by painting this
as somehow Trump lying or misrepresenting things.
Because make no mistake, these regressive leftist journalists,
genuinely do believe that the general public is that stupid.
But what it reveals is that there are people out there in positions of
enormous power when it comes to communication and the
distribution of information, who are obviously so partisan, and
unscrupulous, and so desperate for any kind of dirt, that they will
literally call the White House to fact check something that is clearly a
joke, just on the off chance that maybe something shifty was going
on, or that maybe they could paint Trump in a bad light somehow by
blowing it out of proportion.
Either way, it’s bad for democracy, and I think most people are fed
up with it.
Huge social justice fail to the mainstream media on this
one.
Unfortunately, I have talked so long about the first two topics that
we don’t have time for a bonus topic.
But tune in next time, you might get lucky!