Radical Math at the DOE in NYC (and Everywhere Else)

City Journal

Sol Stern
Radical Math at the DOE
“Social justice” teachers propagandize while Chancellor Klein looks the other way.
11 May 2007

Late last month, over 400 high school math teachers and education professors gathered in Brooklyn for a three-day conference, titled “Creating Balance in an Unjust World: Math Education and Social Justice.” Prominently displayed on the official program’s first page was a passage from Paulo Freire, the Brazilian Marxist educator and icon of the teaching-for-social-justice movement:

“There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to . . . bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of our world.”

The conference’s organizers left nothing to the imagination about their leftist agenda. At many of the conference’s 28 workshops, math teachers proudly demonstrated how they used classroom projects to train students in seeing social problems from a radical anti capitalist perspective. At a plenary session, Professor Marilyn Frankenstein of the University of Massachusetts’ math education department proclaimed that elementary school teachers should not use traditional math lessons, in which students calculate, say, the cost of food. Rather, the teachers should make clear that in a truly “just society,” food would “be as free as breathing the air.”

New York City’s Department of Education insists that the radical math conference was perfectly appropriate....

But suppose you’re a parent with children in the public schools and you happen to believe in the old fashioned, anti-Freirian view that public education in a democracy must be politically neutral, and that teachers have an ethical and professional responsibility to keep their politics, left-wing or right-wing, out of the classroom. What if you want your child to learn, not Sweat Shop Math, but rather the traditional algebra, trigonometry, and calculus—part of a curriculum that throughout the twentieth century helped millions of Gotham public school students from poor immigrant families graduate and pursue productive careers?

Unfortunately, you’re probably not going to get much help from the DOE. A few days before the conference, I provided schools chancellor Joel Klein with details on the city teachers and schools that were participating. His response: “This is a private conference, at which a range of views will be expressed. It seems that many of these views are hardly ‘radical’. . . . In any case, the people who are speaking at this conference are participating in their personal capacity, not as representatives of the Department of Education. We are committed to making sure that all of our teachers teach math to our high standards—and we are working hard to build on our students’ recent substantial gains.” [all emphasis mine]

Hardy, Har-Har. "...these view are hardly radical".... Indeed. I think it just comes down to this: the players in power (key word) have become accustomed to having wrapped around themselves and their ideas, a tight, impenetrable cloak of irreproachableness. With all the Leftist organizations, the ACLU, the NEA, and powerful lobbyists and money, what can anyone do to stop this Socialist madness? The Gramscian/Freire Humanist hegemony will only get more outrageous, more pervasive, more brutal. And the losers are our children. Not just a few children. All of them in the public school systems right across America Amerika.

In a 1993 pamphlet to teachers, the NEA had this to say:

“Allegiance to a nation is the biggest stumbling block to the creation of international government. National boundaries and the concept of sovereignty must be abolished. The quickest way to do this is to condition the young to another and broader alliance. Opinion favorable to international government will be developed in the social studies curriculum in the public schools.”

It's not just the "social studies curriculum". It's math, it's the so-called "language arts studies" (the textbooks are subtly pushing this insanity), and the teachers themselves - you know, the "certified" teachers, who propagandize your kid every day, day after day with this rot. And worst of all, it's your government who is sponsoring this agenda, through it's many agencies, who are all on board with this Globalist doctrine.

They've already done it to us, that goes without saying. Do you hate math? If you do, it's no wonder. But that's beside the point. You are a fool, if you continue to let them turn your children into little mindless automatons, incapable of reasoning, unable to form rational decisions.

Are we going to let them do it to our children, and our grandchildren without a fight? Friends, you better get involved in your child's education. And you better put on your hard face when you go calling on school administrators, because to them, you are just a gnat to be swatted away.

But you have one thing going for you: It's your child they are corrupting with this multicultural, relative values, morally degenerate rot.

It's said, you can serve only one master. Do you know who your master is?

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Khruschev's Shoe

I guess we owe a debt of gratitude to ol' Khruschev - this image has drawn the line in the sand for so many. His boorish behavior at the UN shocked a lot of people at the time, and of course that was his intent.

During the cold-war, there used to be a saying about the Russian's negotiating position that went like this: "What's mine is mine, and what's yours, we'll negotiate." Dialogue won't work with idealogues, and the longer we deceive ourselves that compromise is possible, the worse it will get. With Islamists and the leftist, so-called secular progressives we have an even worse position at the dialogue table: We are dealing not with people, but rather with an ideology, inflexible and absolute. It can be infuriating to try to talk to someone who is behind that wall of fundamentalism. My own mother used to get me crazy with her own brand of Baptist fundamentalism. Even at a young age, I knew I was dealing with a sick person, who did not see me as a person, who therefore had no real compassion for anyone, because if the other person would not be persuaded to see the world through her eyes, then well...the deficiency lay with the other. No possibility of real dialogue or exchange of ideas. Another thing I learned back them was that idealogues hate, or worse deny all facts that run counter to their beliefs. Period. At the age of thirteen, I retreated behind a wall of Agnosticism, and only discovered in the late 60's that there is a spiritual world.

And today I'm writing at seemingly cross-purposes, because on one hand, I must always remember that when dealing with ideologues, they always have but one purpose: to slay their opponents. Or to push their adversaries aside, as irrelevent. And on the other hand, there is that spiritual world I discovered, which for a time seemed to be the answer to the world's strife. My mistake was thinking that there needed to be a "spiritual solution" to the world's problems. I now believe that the world is perfect as it is, and is under the umbrella of grace, whether my imperfect eyes see it or not. And in this perfect world, there is a war raging at the moment, in which the multi-cultural Marxists would bring everyone down to their level (stuck on stupid). The Islamists practice of al-Taqiyya segues rather handily into this leftist, multicultural crap, giving rise to CAIR, which is poisoning our campuses throughout America. Oh, yeah, it is war. I have to give homage to Fjordman and Baron Bodissey for opening my eyes. Thank you for sharing your insights and observations, and also for showing how to engage the enemy.


No Apology