Stephen Downes

Joanne Jacobs relays this accusation that Woke is alive and well in math education from Erika Sanzi of Defending Education (the article is in the Washington Times, but Jacobs doesn't mention that). We're supposed to think this is a bad thing, but I'm personally relieved to see that people are still thinking about issues of agency and identity in education, even as people like Jacobs and Sanzi try literally to oppress it. Sanzi begins by dumping on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which since 1920 has been publishing academic journals, math standards, and other resources. She picks three of the 622 concurrent sessions to critize for existing: Iron Sharpens Iron: Black Womxn in Mathematics Education (BWXME) Speak; Black Feminist Mathematics Pedagogies: Implications for Teaching from a Curricular Analysis (which btw looks really solid); and Reflecting on My Whiteness: Unpacking the Barriers towards Transformative Mathematics Teaching. The image used to illustrate the Jacobs post is entirely fake, fabricated by the art department of the NY Post. Note that while I rarely link to this sort of coverage in OLDaily, for good reason, I keep an eye on it, because it lays bare the means and motivations for a lot of 'education reform', including a lot of educational technology. Image via Lindsey Jensen.