Skip to main content

Math Textbooks

As a student and now as a teacher I have used math books regularly as part of my work. They serve different purposes, aim at different readerships, are used for different types of courses, and so on. 

There is a long history of using examples in math books that reflect the culture of the authors and possibly what they think the mainstream audience is. Many of the probability and statistics books that I have read over the years were very heavily gendered, using male and female as the easiest example of two related populations.

In more recent years I've noticed that statistics textbooks were more willing to use as examples whether or not there was enough evidence of bias to justify a lawsuit being successful.  Such lawsuits are a more common part of our culture, and the books reflect that.

I don't think I've seen any math books that I would call radical or outside the mainstream. While the profession has diversified a good deal during my time in it (thank God) it does not often push back against the mainstream. That is why it feels very strange for Governor DeSantis of Florida to ban most of the math books that the public schools had been using as pushing some kind of political agenda that is a mixture of Critical Race Theory and a few other popular public enemies in his mind.

I've seen some of these books and work with teacher education faculty that prepare our students to use them. You just need to look through the pages; there is no there there. It is math, not a political viewpoint.

This seems particularly brazen; if Governor DeSantis and his allies feel that they benefited politically from doing this, what's next?  If you do not tether your accusations to anything factual, the sky's the limit in terms of made-up controversies.

He could be using his power and bully-pulpit to provide more resources for public education; more salary and training for teachers that could go along with higher accountability; invest in school infrastructures; the list is long of things that would make sense. He and the people that support him have chosen another path.

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 28, 2022 at 1:52 PM

    I was very taken aback by the original announcement, but the couple of examples the government finally came out with of the issue did seem "more there" than I expected. The examples were sparse, and you know they are going to be the most "radical", but still ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. JCApril 28, 2022 at 1:59 PM

    Yes, the examples came out the day after I posted this if I recall. They were about a survey of racial attitudes, so acknowledging that such a survey existed was deemed offensive. More than I thought but still "weak tea".

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betrayal

I caught a student cheating on a final exam this morning. I had a line of sight on them and watched for ten minutes as they took their cellphone out of their pocket, kept it below their table, typed into it, read it, put it away, then wrote on the exam, repeating this cycle over and over again.  I was a bit surprised as the exam was open notes but this student had not attended many of our classes, just stopping by for exams, and I conjecture that they had no notes to open. I confronted the student who admitted that they had done wrong in an inarticulate non-confessional way. By the afternoon they had signed off on the honor code violation report to avoid further investigation and possible sanctions beyond failing the exam.  Is anger the right emotion to feel now? I had a working relationship with the student, although they had not contributed much to it. They had deceived me in order to gain unwarranted advantage over their peers in the class and that is not right. I don't wan...
1 comment
Read more

Holiday Break

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year. There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways. Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC. I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not kn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collective

Something good happened this week; I was informed of it yesterday when a colleague forwarded an email to me announcing it.  The announcement had to do with our university administration committing resources to something that needed doing; the fact that it had not been done had threatened the safety and work environment of dozens of my colleagues. I was clueless about it until in my job as ombudsperson I heard about it from multiple individuals. 95% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is focused on the individuals who come to me, brainstorming about their options and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each. I've been around my university for over 36 years so I've picked up some knowledge of our system and as a mathematician I have a lot of training and experience in problem-solving. I'm not bad at counseling stressed individuals; professional development at ombuds meetings has helped me a lot with that. 5% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is managing upward. The...
Post a Comment
Read more