Woke physics - image

[old kodger]

just when I thought that I was getting a handle on all of this, it turns out that "woke" (apart from ending sleep) means GET A BLOODY LIFE!

[Jon]

Woke culture recently made another move to add "equity" to mathematics instruction. Equality means leveling the playing field so that everyone has equal opportunities. Equity means tilting the table so that everyone has equal outcomes. The Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction guide was bad, but what happened this week in Virginia is much worse. Here's a look at anti-math critical race theory (CRT) in action.

Loudoun County, Virginia is the wealthiest county in America ($142K per capita income), and they have a public school system with over 80,000 students. There's just one problem: black and Latino students are not performing as well in math classes as white and Asian students. This is a well-documented worldwide performance disparity, like how a white man has not won the 100 meter Olympic sprint in over 40 years. But you can tell that the Loudoun County School District didn't consult with any intelligence researchers or psychometricians; woke culture slurs those fields as "racist science". Instead, they paid an equity consultantcy called The Equity Collaborative, who apparently convinced them that these low scores are caused by structural racism and white supremacy.

Their solution? Placing all students in generalized dumbed-down math "concepts" courses, and removing all advanced math courses below 11th grade. It's simple: with easier math classes, fewer black and Latino students will fail, and the white supremacists (and...Asian supremacists?) won't be able to take more advanced math classes to boost their supremacy.

Here's a school board member who is concerned with these changes to the math curriculum:



The Loudoun County anti-math initiative is rife with cute infographics and catchy sayings like "Follow the math path" (hey, that rhymes!). Feel-good words like "empower" and "encourage", and heart icons are used to draw attention away from the fact that they're actually removing higher-level math courses.



Parents who speak out against this are being targeted as racists, via a 600+ member private Facebook group called "Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County", whose members include the county's prosecutor. Anti-critical race theory parents are organizing under a group called P.A.C.T (Parents Against Critical Theory) but the woke group is trying to out them. One woke Loudoun County parent posted the following to the anti-racist group, in which she calls for people to infiltrate the anti-critical race theory group, expose their identities, and hack their websites.



The above Facebook post prompted some legal action in the form of this cease-and-desist letter.

Threats of hacking and doxing are often a precursor of death threats, and we're seeing those too:





The Parents Against Critical Theory site sells merchandise to support their cause. Much of it has this "Just Two People Chillin" theme, with a black person and a white person sitting side by side, like this shirt:



I didn't get it at first, until I saw that it's based on this short video in which a teacher pushing critical race theory pressures a student to view a photo of two people in the context of their race. You can see why the anti-woke group has adopted this as their theme. 1:46 video:

More:

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/13...l-race-theory/
https://fightforschools.com/we-cant-wait
https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudo...theory-hacking
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ce-theory.html
https://stoplcpscrt.com/
https://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruc...i-virginia.pdf
https://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruc...pi/index.shtml
https://www.lcps.org/cms/lib/VA01000...lan-9_2020.pdf
https://www.lcps.org/cms/lib/VA01000...ugust_2020.pdf
https://www.lcps.org/equityoverview

[CharlesWaugh]

Jon,
Thank you. Very informative.

Excellent concise description:
Equality means leveling the playing field so that everyone has equal opportunities.
Equity means tilting the table so that everyone has equal outcomes.

[nova_robotics]

We need to provide the same opportunities to all. The way to achieve this is not to beat everyone down to the same lowest common denominator.

A couple years ago I got a really nice lathe from a high school for pennies on the dollar. They couldn't afford the liability of having machine tools around students anymore.

It seems like there's an assault on people born after 2000. Liability culture run amok, misguided and corrosive attempts at political correctness, and the increasingly difficult proposition of ever owning a house... things look very bleak.

[Toolmaker51]

Yeah, I'll emphasize it; the quote covers it.
"Equality means leveling the playing field so that everyone has equal opportunities. Equity means tilting the table so that everyone has equal outcomes".

Not unlike unionization, is it?

[old kodger]

If universally dumb is what you want, TILT THE TABLE!

[NeiljohnUK]

Then push the output into woke Universities for further indoctrination... In the UK there are call's for removing all entry standard qualification requirements to go to Uni. Hopefully I'll be retired before that tsunami of excrement washes up to our post grad dept.

[Elizabeth Greene]

We need to provide the same opportunities to all. The way to achieve this is not to beat everyone down to the same lowest common denominator.

I strongly agree with this. Equality is making sure everyone can enter the race, not adding weight to slow down the fastest runners.

[WmRMeyers]

I strongly agree with this. Equality is making sure everyone can enter the race, not adding weight to slow down the fastest runners.

Hey, we're only sixty years ahead of Harlan Ellison's short story "Harrison Bergeron." https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&p...ZmNmMjFjMjgxZA

[mklotz]

Virginia, where the "dumbing down of America" isn't just an observation, it's government policy. Makes one wonder what Jefferson would have had to say.