From Vincent Carroll:
Earlier this year, a student at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins approached Amy Oliver, the director of operations at the Independence Institute who hosts a radio talk show in northern Colorado. The student showed her a test question from a math class that read in part: “In 1988, there were 6.047 million people registered to vote in Florida. … The number of Democrats was 0.908 million more than the number of liars  I mean Republicans.â€Â
Oliver called the principal, Tom Lopez, wondering what was up. In a voice mail and later conversation on March 29, Lopez confirmed that the question did come from his school, but that it was meant as “humor†between a teacher and students with whom he had “established a rapport.â€Â
Last week, The Coloradoan in Fort Collins did its own story on the math test. “Lopez said that question was one of two versions the teacher created for the class, with the other reversing the partisan roles and referring to Democrats as liars,†the paper reported. “The teacher gave the differing versions to students based on the teacher’s assessment of a student’s political leanings, Lopez said.â€Â
The article raises several questions. Oliver says Lopez never mentioned the second test in his voice mail or conversation with her six weeks ago. If so, that’s a curious oversight. Why not?
For that matter, how would a math teacher know the political leanings of his students unless he talked about politics a lot?
Why is a math teacher talking about politics a lot?
For those who don’t think a host of educators are happily attempting to indoctrinate students with “progressive” messages—I’ve seen the charge routinely shrugged off and even ironically dismissed as just another paranoid rightwing conspiracy (even though the intellectual snobs who tend to sniff at this sort of thing would entertain the notion that the President used the opportunity of Katrina to kill him some black folk)—here is a case in point, one that I can assure you, from personal experience, is not at all unusual.
For his part, Carroll asks precisely the right questions: if the teacher was, as he now claims, simply joking (and doing so TOLERANTLY, by indulging the prejudices of EACH of the individual political ideologues in his class), why didn’t that come out earlier, when the charges were first leveled?
And second, isn’t it possible to teach math—even using “real world examples,” without using politically-charged boilerplate like Florida election returns? I mean what? Had he already used the percentage of godbotherers opposed to abortion?
Having taught for many years myself, I certainly don’t advocate keeping politics out of the classroom; such a prohibition would, I fear, manifest itself as yet another feint toward political correctness—itself a highly politicized arm of the progressive movement, and one that has turned “tolerance” into the new totalitarianism.
At the same time, though, such outwardly hostile partisanship can certainly poison the learning environment. I don’t buy the argument that we need to make students feel “comfortable”—so what I’m arguing here is not that we excoriate the teacher (and by extension, Mr Lopez) for the offense of making someone feel “harassed” (this is the argument used by those who have stricken from the curriculum and many textbooks mentions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame because it could potentially wound the self-esteem of someone with scoliosis or an overlarge calcium deposit on his shoulder); instead, what I’m arguing is that such bald partisanship, which serves no particular purpose other than to attempt indoctrination and ensure an ideological status quo should be frowned upon by higher-ups within the system.
Of course, many students at that age instinctively reject the philosophies of teachers as a form of rebellion—so whether or not such attempts to indoctrinate carry a backlash or not is something that bears exploring (for instance, I’ve read a thesis that the students most susceptible to indoctrination tend to be the “best” students, who are, by nature, the most officious and eager to “learn,” as well as eager to curry intellectual favor with their teachers / professors).
One mitigating factor here in the case of the teacher and Mr Lopez is that the threat of grade deflation is minimized by the subject matter. The answers on math tests tend to be based on the rules governing a particular mathematics, and so would prove difficult to grade subjectively.
Still, his outward bias can teach students that it is better to just go along and keep their opinions to themselves than to engage and repudiate ridiculously generalized slurs like the one offered up by the teacher in question.
And that chills free expression, and sets the stage for the very kind of anti-intellectualism we see on many college campuses today.
If the test had two versions and were given according to the student’s political leanings, how would this get to the radio station in the first place. Wouldn’t a Repulican leaning student gotten the “other” question and thus would have nothing to report.
Sure, politicizing math may involve certain consequences, but consider one North Carolina Public School approach to Math:
~shudder~
Clearly, it’s time to start killing people. Too bad our national will to kill has been sapped by math teachers.
What do political leanings and math have to do with one another? Furthermore, what does the distrubution of Democrats vs. Republicans in Florida in 1988 have to do with that same thing in 2000? I think Florida only started swinging to the R side of the spectrum since the mid-1990s.
Or at least that’s what revisionist history tells us.
There are no Republicans in Florida.
Google it people!
actus, is that you?
Hmmm, maybe our schools need a Fairness Doctrine too.
Think of the fairness, people!
If not, then certainly a fellow traveler.
You know, even as a I disagree with some “godbotherers” on some things, I never got the sense that the government they would have might actually kill me. Not so much for the Greenies/Commies.
It’s not so much that math and politics don’t go together as making sure that the student receives a uniform lesson during all instructional time. So if they’re learning about the evil right wingers in their other classes, it only follows suit that you would incorporate that into the math curriculum.
Not as such perhaps, Patrick. But they have a history of starving populations in Commie countries. Something about a “centrally managed economy” and “five-year plans”…
The Greenies would kill ya in a heartbeat if a whale demanded it.
There’s no way the teacher made two different tests just for such a paltry little joke. I mean, get a life. So the teacher and Lopez are lying, which means they know that what was done in the original instance was wrong. Which means they’ll be very careful in the future not to do anything that can be set against this incident to establish a pattern of inappropriateness. They’ll have to be more subtle.
mojo, sorry for the confusing double negative (never… not), you’ve totally misinterpreted what I said, but that’s my fault.
But why would they lie? People have done stupid things just like that, sure, but isn’t the lie relatively easily proven? One would hope that the downside to their lying would be severe, making the risk far outweigh the reward.
People who politicize everything are so unbelievably tiresome. Conversation is interesting when it’s unpredictable, and whenever you find yourself in conversation with a partisan of any kind, you know with excruciating certainty how the car wreck is going to take place. I like to read my politics, not talk about it, and after ten years in DC, I’m convinced that most other people here feel the same way. If they didn’t the place would be unlivable. Or even more unlivable than it is during pollen season.
This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
So, beetroot, was the “joke” appropriate? Or is it okay to let it slide because it, alone, won’t sap the national will to kill brown people?
You expected any different from him?
I wonder why the teacher’s name is not mentioned. What’s being overlooked is that there is NO WAY to figure out the number of Democrats vs. the number of Republicans from the information given, so the “joke” was a pretty mean one I’d say.
Eight to ten years ago the math dept at Wilmer-Hutchins HS, located in a predominantly black suburb of Dallas, built a diagnostic test to be given during the first week of school in order to determine each student’s current level of skills. These teachers in an attempt to speak to these kids in their own language wrote problems for the test concerning cutting a kilo of coke, how much a hooker owed her pimp and how to trade food stamps for cigarettes. When parents complained, the teachers claimed they were just being funny. They were all unemployed within the month. The school district has since been shut down by the state and incorporated into the Dallas ISD (which is not neccessarily a step in the right direction).
Do the math-arena!
I’m on my church’s communications commission (that is, I do the website; others do the parish newsletter and ads for local papers and stuff). We’re being asked to put together our budget request for next year, and the head of the commission felt moved to include this:
Why, God? Yes indeed, we should pull out of Iraq so that we don’t have an undue increase in postage costs to mail our newsletter. At meetings including the rector and associate, the one-sided political talk grows if anything more frank. All while touting how very tolerant “we” are.
At least I’m not a minor whose academic future is in the hands of these people.
Question: Is it possible to educate by federal government and honor constitutional principle? IOW, is there any part of centralised, tax-paid education that doesn’t in large part involve either tacit or direct philosophies on much of life?
Are such not too closely aligned with the underlying ways and means of religion as to raise the church/state problem?
Seems to me that had the principle clearly been a separation of state and state-provided philosophy—secularism, creation vs evolution, global warming, racism/sexism teaching, etc.—there’d be no government schooling.
My child has routinely found, for examples, English and history classes to be indoctrination by contemporary literature and points of view designed by, I guess, DC’s NEA, not exactly a bastion of restraint and objectivity.
Odd as it sounds, the melting pot is increasingly intolerant of views not its own. It has itself become an entire envelope of social, cultural, and international thought training, indirect or otherwise. There is no such thing as no philosophy.
I should add, because that’s government’s job.
There is no such thing as no philosophy.
Exactly. And there’s really no such thing as no religion. Any answer to a religious question is a religious belief.
Is there a God?
a) yes
b) no
c) maybe
All three responses constitute religious belief. The only way to be non-religious is to be incapable of formulating religious questions. I’m fairly sure my kittehs don’t debate the afterlife while I’m at work.
Homo credens
Back to the subject, the government likes to fund or de-fund groups based on ideology all the time, such as not funding a soup kitchen that has scriptures on the wall. If it had Envirowhack posters, however, it would be A-OK.
TW: I’m having trouble85 concentrating today; does it show?
So, were the Founders aiming to take government virtually entirely out of the private sector? I can’t imagine its being in education, health, entitlements, and certainly social policy as special interests lobby it these days as constitutional.
My fear is that government is straddling the fence between being in the last throes of a responsible, origionalist, representative entity on the one hand, and literally entirely up for sale—typically to social interests (including government itself) who have huge sums tied up in attempted self-enriching legislation—on the other.
The predominant reasoning is that only the short term perceived benefits should drive the success of that legislation. The only thing protesting it are the taxpayers looking at anticipated costs. The principle of government not dictating to the private sector how it behaves is so rarely raised that it’s virtually nonexistent—for most folks, Jeff’s example touches only on vague pros and cons, and rarely on the underlying fundamental wisdom and rights, such as they may or may not be. Slathering this statist rot with all the morality-trappings of bad religion isn’t making it look any better either.
We live in a pretty vivid political climate. Watching some half the political landscape experimenting with wholesale socio-political grifting and its attendant bullshit moralizing should be stimulating a serious libertarian effort. Was Ron Paul a setup?
Or an academic whose minor future was in the hands of those people, even.
TW: taking94 my sabbatical—still. Wow, has it been 10 years?
There is a lot of math in politics:
1. 29% of America approve of the Democrat controlled congress. 35% approve of the president. Explain why congress is good and George Bush sucks pond water. Show your work.
2. 60% of American wants a set timeline for surrender in Iraq. 71% of the senate voted against that timeline. Why were only 29% of the senate aware of 60% of American’s wishes? Show your work.
3. Nancy Pelosi is approx 70 years old. Her boobs are 12 years old, her eyelids are 7 years old, and her face is 6 years old. If she were to have a butt augmentation in the summer of 2009, what would be the median age of the human compilation that is Nancy Pelosi in 2011? Show your work.
4. If a small African child needs 4 grams of protein and 8 grams of fat per week to survive, and one Hillary Clinton’s cankles contains approx 38 million protein grams, and 230 million fat grams, would both cankles need to be amputated to sustain a village of 1300 hungry children for 10 years? Show your work.
alppuccino,
My hat’s off to you on that one… not just anyone could’ve pulled it off.
J
Sorry, this is unsolvable with the terms presented. It’s also necessary to take into account Nanny’s mental age (about 8).
Absolutely! I’m continually amazed and gratified to find that the young punks I know are much more libertarian/conservative than I was at their age. It couldn’t have anything to do with their rejection of the Birkenstocks & Gray Wool Socks set who dominate their schools and tried so very hard to indoctrinate them. Of course I also know quite a few of their high school and college teachers and I’m not at all surprised that any kid with anything on the ball would peg many of them as phony pseudo-intellectuals on the first day of class.
Oddly enough, I’ve also noticed that the “good students”, at least in grad school, tend to be dim little suck-ups. And I’ve learned that it’s not wise to ask too many hard questions about things like the assigned reading, which might tend to reveal that the instructor hasn’t actually read, or comprehended, the course material.
m’kay? children, it’s been twelve years, m’kay? and we still haven’t taught you how to read well enough to fill out a job application at McDonalds, m’kay? or balance your checkbook, m’kay? but here’s everything you need to know about life, m’kay? Bush sucks, m’kay? Bush sucks! Bush sucks! Bush sucks! m’kay?
What are the rules about “teaching out of discipline” in Colorado? In Virginia, middle school teachers who are certified in two disciplines (e.g. English and History) can legally teach in any discipline (e.g. Math and Science). As you might guess, we have a lot of middle school math teachers with very little college math training. Any chance that the teacher in this class falls into that category?
I’m not sure why it would matter – math teachers are almost as capable as falling into moonbattery as the softer sciences. The fact that they went into teaching gives them away.