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 Copied from POLITICS by Bob Moylan (1:275/429.5)
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 x plus y = PC insanity
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 05/25/97
 The Independent - London
   You've heard of Ebonics, the term employed to dignify the grammatically
anarchic English spoken by rebellious black American youths. Now meet its
cousin, Ethnomathematics, an emerging field of academic study that disputes
the supremacy of European thought over the science and understanding of
numbers.
   Far from being irrelevant or obscure, the ethnomathematicians are powerful
within the US educational establishment, exercising a significant
intellectual influence over the teaching of maths in state schools.
Ethnomathematics: Challenging Eurocentrism in Mathematics Education is a
recently published collection of essays that seeks to find in maths a mirror
of America's racially and sexually diverse population. Starting from the
premise that "geographically, Europe does not exist", the book seeks to
elaborate a "culturally responsive pedagogy" which communicates the theory
and practice of mathematics in terms of - among other disciplines -
anthropology, cognitive psychology, feminism and African studies.
   Never mind two plus two equals four, three is the square root of nine and
other received Eurocentric banalities. By studying the geometry of sand
drawings in Africa south of the Equator, quilt patterns in Africa north of
the Equator and the accounting methods of the ancient Navajo Indians, you
will soon lose your respect for the time- honoured authority of Euclid and
Pythagoras. Indeed, the Ethnomathematics book includes a dismissive reference
to the "so-called Pythagorean theorem".
   The lesson is that maths, contrary to established opinion, is not an
absolute science. The International Study Group on Ethnomathematics (ISGEm)
advocates that the teaching in schools of "multicultural mathematics" should
be based on the recognition "that learning mathematics is a unique process
for each individual". It is nonsense to suggest that some are "good at maths"
and some are not. All students can be good at maths, all can be "empowered",
so long as they are taught in a culturally, historically and psychologically
sensitive way.
   The ISGEm is an affiliate of the US National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics, the body which shapes the curriculum and determines the
standards of maths education. A glance at some of the New Math, or
Constructivist Math, ideas promoted by the council reveals just how
wholeheartedly the ethnomathematicians' prescriptions have been absorbed.
   The council's "position statement" repeatedly stresses the need for
teachers to devise methods of instruction sensitive to the "cultural"
background, heritage and learning styles of students. Later this year the
council is due to publish a collection of essays under the title Changing the
Faces of Mathematics, which will address itself to ethnomathematical,
feminist and cross-cultural perspectives on: Gender, African Americans,
Latinos and Latinas, American Indians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
  (Presumably because geographically they do not exist, Europeans do not
feature in the list of chapter titles.)
   The council has declared that a good primary maths class should "place
less importance on paper-and-pencil calculations and more on numbers sense";
"place more emphasis on talking and writing about problem-solving than
answers per se"; and, of course, "have a set of calculators that children can
use".
   More than three-quarters of US teachers have implemented the principles,
but nowhere has its been embraced with more zeal than in California. The
state's high priestess of New Math is Ruth Parker, an educational consultant
who argues: "Mathematics as it is used in the real world is not about
memorisation of theorems or rote procedures for getting right answers." The
students' "thinking or approach must not be structured for them, so that they
are not being led to 'the right way' of solving a problem."
   Under this formula "conjecture" and "exploration" are prized above hard
and fast solutions. Teachers are "co-learners" sharing the student's voyages
of "self-discovery". A 12-year-old boy in Palo Alto said: "Everyone has a
different way to solve things. I have learned how to become mathematically
powerful."
   Parents and recalcitrant teachers have denounced "fuzzy", "MTV" and
"Mickey Mouse" maths. A website called Mathematically Correct has become the
forum of organised resistance, positing such novel admonitions as "Honour the
correct answer more than the guess" and "Give good grades only for good work.
"
   Wayne Bishop, a professor of mathematics at California State University,
has taken his own children out of the state school system for fear that their
minds will be contaminated by what he considers to be a reckless laboratory
experiment, using the children of California as guinea pigs.
  "There is no such thing as ethnomathematics," he said. "It is a way of
avoiding mathematics while seeking to build some kind of cultural self-
esteem."
   The Council of Teachers of Mathematics is reconsidering its loyalty to New
Math after a scathing report last week from the American Federation of
Teachers. It found that in every respect US maths students lagged far behind
their counterparts in France, Germany and Japan.
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... 2 + 2 = 5	for sufficiently large values of 2.			
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