[stephen_greet]

It's like they didn't even read the information they are arguing against. It just seems like the author wanted to rail against the "ideology of wokeness" as they call it without regard to the merits of this specific argument.

[dsr_]

I have just read the document Weiss[edit: Klainerman] is criticizing.

I understand that she might find it infuriating, because 2/3 of it consists of repeated worksheet pages about planning, executing and critiquing improvements in math education.

The other 1/3 of it, however, is largely discussion of bad math teaching, framed as racist math teaching. Most of it simply points out that bad math teaching is frequently authoritarian math teaching.

I find the framing grating and the discussion of pedagogy insufficient -- I would prefer about ten times as much -- but this is a calendrical worksheet book, not a text.

I suspect Weiss [edit: Klainerman] did not read the document he is criticizing, or didn't understand it.

[ketzo]

> bad math teaching is frequently authoritarian math teaching

I think the framing you mention is part of a broader effort to understand that in the U.S., authoritarianism is, overwhelmingly, racism. If you can think of a large, structured system in the U.S., you can usually think of ways that it (for some reason...) has worse outcomes for non-white people.

[_y5hn]

Authoritarianism is bad, but it is bad in much worse ways than racism. Most cultures, let's face it, has some racism. Even the most divine society, would be racist against an alien race. It just doesn't show its ugly face, most of the time.

The outrage is really about mandated bad teaching environments. There are also very bad side effects for minorities, but calling it racist, when the culture is overall about domination, is missing the target.

[Sporktacular]

Spot on. And of course culture warriors like commenter Marco pile on:

"As awful as this is, the fact that it's funded by The Gates Foundation makes it even worse. So when Bill isn't trying to save the world from Climate Change or drive the world batshit crazy about Covid he's spending his money on racist initiatives..."

All they need to validate their misguided outrage without having to read a damn article. Wish Weiss would start a series about lazy pseudo-intellectualism feeding all this tribalism.

[ketzo]

This is Bari Weiss' entire playbook: construct a strawman, and yell furiously that the strawman is trying to cancel you.