Is teaching objective facts an imposition of Western imperialism?:
In actual fact, key concepts behind mathematics came to the West from non-Western lands. The concept of the number zero — a revolutionary concept for mathematics — has roots in Mesopotamia and India, for example. Al-jabr, or “algebra” as we call it, came to us from the Middle East. Moreover, mathematics is embraced far beyond the West today as the basis for just about every modern advancement — from smartphones to medical research to skyscrapers. This is important context before dismissing mathematics, as we have always understood it, as being “oppressive”. These are ominous signs of our times. For good reason do many describe ours a “post-truth” world. Social theorist Thomas Sowell, who is himself African-American, was sharp in his analysis that “we are living in an era when sanity is controversial and insanity is just another viewpoint”. English philosopher G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) saw the early signs of the West’s abandonment of objective truth, and in a cheeky tone, he warned: We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green…
Could it be that in coming years, insisting that 2+2=4 will become as risky as saying that there are only two genders?
Kurt Mahlberg, “Is it racist to say that 2+2=4?” at MercatorNet
Of course. Many mediocrities in education have everything to gain and nothing to lose by replacing actual knowledge and skills with busywork around current fads and dogmas. The longer this goes on, the more desperately they need to prevent any reckoning, any basis for comparison, any way they may be held accountable for the wreckage.
See also: Nancy Pearcey: A dispatch from the Woke war on math
and
The progressive war on science takes dead aim at math