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ON WHO NEEDS TO LEARN MATHEMATICS: A THREAD. The pic features a quote from RG, one of the most prominent proponents of changing mathematical education. Though she has no degrees in mathematics, she has very strong views about mathematical education, including that mathematics 1/x
"operates as whiteness." For this thread, I want to examine the quote in the top tweet. This is so emblematic of the critical theory approach to the world and to scholarship: it's about me. I'm so special that my various "axes of identity" and their "intersections" can bring 2/x
insight and even cause a field of scholarship to "gain" from having me in it. I reject this view. The narcissism it proposes is ridiculous and, in the case of mathematics, so farcical that I am moved to explain why. From the perspective of a critical theorist, I have many 3/x
"marginalized identities." I'm deaf, mentally ill (PTSD), poverty class since birth, a survivor of sexual assault as both a child and adult, and first in my family to college. From the critical theory perspective, the field of mathematics is supposed to gain from the many 4/x
types of "oppression" I have experienced. These experiences are supposed to enable me to approach mathematics in a way that people who can hear, who've never had a panic attack or flashback to a trauma, who've never missed a meal and for whom 'rape' is an abstraction, cannot. 5/x
This is so ridiculous that I hardly know where to begin. Mathematics does not need me and it is not "gaining" from having me. Almost the precise inverse is true. I had zero background for college, having been to high school in a church basement and taught myself all of high 6/x
school mathematics. Thus I have an unusual amount of insight into how mathematics affects a person from the start of a journey--in my case, starting at knowing little more than my times tables--to where I am now, having completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics that req'd 7/x
me to learn calculus, number theory, proof techniques, statistics, linear algebra, and more. Here is what mathematics has given me: 1) DISCIPLINE. Mathematics is hard. A math major comes with a ton of homework in every class. I did more work in one week for one mathematics 8/x
course--any mathematics course--than for many of my other courses in a month, and in some cases an entire semester. Getting behind in mathematics is the kiss of death. You can't stay up late and do extra reading, consult sparknotes or watch a YouTube video and skate by. 9/x
2) PERSEVERANCE. Trigonometric substitution is a tricky integration technique. There are, for the tougher ones, so many places to make a small error and screw yourself over. I tried over 100 times to get my first trig sub problem right. Now it's my favorite type of integral. 10/x
I learned that if I don't give up, I can eventually understand anything, even if I have to try dozens of times or in dozens of ways. 3) RESPONSIBILITY. Despite what twitter's critical theorists would have you believe, there are right answers. Mathematics is not the writing 11/x
of essays, where the teacher's mood or particular views affect a grade. When I got an answer wrong, or failed a quiz, or did worse on a test than I wanted to, it was never because the teacher didn't like me or because I disagreed with him on politics or aesthetics. It was 12/x
because I got the answer wrong. I learned to take responsibility for my own learning, my own results, my own process, my own outcomes. 4) AWE. Mathematics is beautiful. In the same way that things are funny because they're true, mathematics is beautiful because it is real. 13/x
It is the language our universe speaks, a universal in the same way that language is a human universal. Learning to mathematically describe an aspect of reality is learning to appreciate beauty in a way that is humbling and ennobling. This is so much more empowering than 14/x
the language games and gotchas of postmodern bullshit--it is grounding, strengthening, nourishing, and helpful. It is everything that the classes in which I learned that Atticus Finch was problematic and the gender unicorn is of crucial importance weren't and could never be. 15/x
From my background of deprivation and trauma, I learned that in mathematics that there is an aspect of reality I can count on. My parents, my country's safety nets, and myself all let me down badly. Mathematics never has. I needed mathematics and I have gained immeasurably 16/x
from it. The narcissism of RG and the Theorists would make me laugh if they and their "akchually 2 + 2 can equal anything hurr durr" accomplices weren't shaking the ladder I took out of hell. There are others who still need the ladder. Badly. Goodnight; thanks for listening. /end
