What does an anti-racist math class look like?

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In July 2020, the provincial government announced a series of actions with the stated aim of tackling racism and inequalities in schools. The changes included eliminating discretionary suspensions for students, strengthening sanctions against teachers who engage in racist behavior, providing teachers with additional training on anti-racism and discrimination, and ending 9th grade. year of integration into applied and theoretical courses, which means that students would not be separated into different groups based on their perceived academic abilities or previous achievements.

In June 2021, the province unveiled a new unstructured Grade 9 math curriculum containing a preamble that stated that “math has been used to normalize racism and the marginalization of non-Eurocentric math knowledge.” Parents like Claudette Rutherford have welcomed the addition. “When it comes to adding anti-racist and anti-colonial language to the curriculum, I felt there was an understanding of our experiences,” says Rutherford, co-founder of Parents of Black Children, a Toronto-based advocacy organization.

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But others were critical: Toronto columnist Sun Brian Lilley, for example, called the language a marker of “the political agenda of the left.” On July 13, he reported that the government had deleted the preamble and quoted an anonymous official as saying his language had gone too far.

A side-by-side comparison of old and updated curricula indicates that the Department of Education has made at least eight changes. For example, he deleted the statement that “mathematics can be subjective” and deleted a reference to “Eurocentric, anti-racist, social justice, social and environmental criticism issues”; in a section titled Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy, a phrase encouraging educators to use CCRP to “create anti-racist and anti-oppressive teaching and learning opportunities to engage students” was changed, and educators were simply urged to use the CCRP to “engage students.” (The ministry did not provide a specific answer to TVO.org’s questions about the deletions.)

On July 15, Premier Doug Ford championed the changes, telling reporters, “In math, let’s stick to math. Other social issues, let’s talk about it, there’s no question about it, but let’s not talk about it in math. Talk about it in other courses offered by schools.

Many educators and experts, however, say the study of mathematics is not that straightforward, and the deletions undermine the ministry’s commitment to tackling racism in education. “Removing the language is counterintuitive to what the ministry says it wants to accomplish,” says Alison Gaymes San Vicente, Toronto District School Board superintendent.

With the recent announcement of Ontario’s back-to-school plan and the fall return fast approaching, TVO.org examines why, sort of, two plus two doesn’t always make four – and what antiracist calculus the class might look like.

Can math be racist?

Jason To, coordinator of high school math and academic pathways at TDSB, says most critics seem to think the new curriculum originally suggested that math, as a subject, was racist. The problem, however, is “really how the math was used,” To says, citing the example of assessment tools used to determine the level of risk a convicted criminal poses to society.

In the United States, research has shown that because machine learning programs use historical data to determine a convicted felon’s chances of reoffending, populations that have historically been disproportionately targeted by law enforcement forces. order are more likely to have a higher recidivism score, which may influence the length of their sentence and the treatment they receive while incarcerated. Earlier this year, The Globe and Mail reported that a security rating scale used by Correctional Service Canada, which researchers found biased against Indigenous women and other racialized groups, was still in use. According to the Globe, black men and Indigenous women were, respectively, about 24% and 64% more likely than their white counterparts to receive the highest security clearance on admission, after controlling for variables such as l age and seriousness of the offense.

To says that the statement on the subjectivity of mathematics that was removed from the curriculum served to challenge the idea that mathematics was only about numbers: “They are trying to keep this perceived objectivity of mathematics as something that should be. sacred and intact, which is why they were so intimidated by the mathematics statement can be subjective, because all of a sudden that veil of objectivity is lifted, and now we can begin to question some of the dangers of how whose mathematics has been practiced and how it is used. ”

And it shouldn’t be controversial to say that “mathematics has been used to normalize the racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledge,” suggests Bryan Bellefeuille, Ojibwe language teacher and Indigenous culture and curriculum support worker in northern Ontario. Historically, he says, Eurocentric mathematical knowledge has eclipsed Indigenous mathematical knowledge: “Most people’s understanding of mathematics is based on what we learned in elementary school.

Something most students don’t learn in school: some Natives, says Bellefeuille,

have unique ways of categorizing shapes that inform how mathematics is applied in everyday life: “When we understand that Indigenous people have geometry, we understand that creating a canoe, creating a basket of berries, is a very complex procedure which use categories of native forms.

Bellefeuille says the absence of such knowledge means generations of Canadians fail to understand how Eurocentric mathematical knowledge has eclipsed “the invaluable knowledge that Indigenous peoples have about mathematics” – and allows the perpetuation of harmful myths about Indigenous peoples. .

What might an anti-racist math class look like?

Educators say integrating anti-racism into math education involves providing students with context on how math has been used to perpetuate racism and giving students the opportunity to apply math in real life scenarios that promote fairness.

In To’s class, for example, students examine the issue of police maps through proportional reasoning: students do a probability experiment where blocks of color – representing the proportion of whites, blacks, browns, and “Other” in the 2011 Toronto population – are placed in a bag. They then choose random blocks from the bag and note the color. As the class aggregates the data, they examine how to convert fractions to decimals and percentages. They then discuss the disproportion by comparing the probability experience with actual data showing that the Toronto police granted a patent to black Torontonians at three times the expected rate. “The important math which is the key element is at the heart of the activity, but we learn a social problem through the context,” To writes to TVO.org.

Agenda Panel, June 15, 2020: Combating Anti-Black Racism in Schools.

Beverly Caswell, assistant professor of mathematics education at the University of Toronto and former director of the Robertson Program for Inquiry-based Teaching in Mathematics and Science, explains how she incorporates practical scenarios: liter and estimating how many of them would be needed to fill a tub – students begin to learn about volume capacity averages… and then ask them to think about how much water their household consumes In a week. She goes on to discuss with the students the number of First Nations communities that have issued boil water advisories and encourages them to explain why. Ultimately, if we want kids to see math as a “tool to help us understand the world,” Caswell says, “[teaching] could do this by using math to understand power and privilege issues.

Jimmy Pai, math teacher at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, says parts of the current curriculum will support educators already accustomed to incorporating race and social justice topics into their teaching: “For teachers who care point to a healthier direction for math and math education and I’m continually thinking about it, recent changes hopefully won’t change much. And likewise, Pai says, not much will change for teachers who disagree with this approach to teaching math. The concern, he said, “is with the teachers who are on the fence and can be persuaded.”

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