What's in their heads?

In particular, what's in Jo Boaler's head?

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The woke side is too often too ridiculous to warrant our attempts to comprehend their motives. This might be unwise for two reasons: (i) one may start underestimating them; (ii) understanding may, sometimes, lead to compassion, and compassion is harder to beat than anger. There is also the third reason, a purely rational one. “Nonsense” is too easy an assessment; (iii) while their logic often appears to be similar to ours, their axioms are always radically different. It is our job as scientists to discover them¹.

We will address the most recent accusation in “reckless disregard for accuracy” against Stanford’s Jo Boaler in a later and longer publication². If you just fell from the Moon, Stanford Professor (of Education) Boaler is the creator of the 2021 California Mathematics Framework that aims to outlaw taking Algebra I in the 8th grade and to replace Algebra II with “Data Science.” Her final goal is to abolish Calculus. Many of our UMB colleagues, those who arrived from the Moon ten years ago, already signed a petition against it (Framework, not the Moon).

Interestingly, Jo Boaler’s public interviews and talks seem to provide more hints about the postulates her worldview is based on than negative press. So far, we found two.

1. Only white men need serious mathematics.

   As Boaler often points out, math is dominated by white men.

   They need it mainly to keep the rest out. Asians of all genders are, obviously, white men adjacent.

   

   From one of Boaler’s talks. Just look at this joyful hippy wagon of the “growth mindset” hitting the dark wall of the “fixed math,” apparently created by the far-right white men. They are so far to the right that they didn’t get in the picture.

   Algorithmic³, reasoning (sic.), rational thinking are worshiped in Western Society, but they are a low level God (sic.) [Boaler in here].

   1. Corollary: Algebra II is bad. Consequence of accepting this Corollary: the route to the high school Calculus can be finally blocked for good.

   2. Corollary: Memorization is bad. Visual aids are always good. Boaler suggests teaching how to evaluate 1÷(2/3) using sticks (maybe carrots?) instead of memorizing the “flip rule.” How many carrots one will need then to do 1÷(2020/2024)? Will there be any carrots to help kids to divide polynomials? If anything is systemic racism, this is: without costly “afterschool enrichment,” your road to the abstract will be barricaded by the piles of s**t carrots.

   3. Corollary: Rigor is bad, hence “math questions with one answer, one way to get them” are bad. Also, being right is not as important as trying all the time. Indeed, “focus on correctness” is bad.

2. Innate mathematical abilities don’t exist.

   Everyone has exactly the same potential [Boaler in here].

   [Boaler] stated, with no citation, that “less than 0.001 percent” of people are “born with brains so exceptional that those brains influence what they go on to do.”

   I am telling kids, you can learn anything, just keep trying.⁴ [Boaler in here].

   We wonder why they don’t say the same things about professional athletes. Oh well.

   1. Corollary: tests are bad. Everybody is equally capable of excelling in them anyways, but “30-50% have ‘math anxiety’;” why traumatize the poor kids? The main purpose of the tests is to protect the white patriarchy, Asians notwithstanding (see Postulate 1).

   2. Corollary: Tracking is inefficient. “[Boaler proposes] to keep all students in the same math classes, rather than ‘track’ some into gifted classes.”

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Much more later. But for now, no one is a cartoon. Even those who continue living on the Moon, like Jo Boaler does, are not.

1. And yet, never argue. Whatever happens, always remember the old adage:

Don’t argue with an idiot [with or without clear axioms], they’ll only bring you down to their level and from afar no one will be able to tell the difference.

2. The accusation has been already dismissed by Stanford.

3. Fun fact: The word “Algorithm” derives from the name of Muhammad ibn Musa alKhwarizmi, a ninth-century Persian mathematician.

4. Here, at the FB, we believe that everyone must push as hard as he/she/ze can towards his/her/zirs limits. However, once reached, it’s time to stop trying. How far one gets by then differs from one person to another. Not everybody can lift a 200 kg barbell (May the force be with him/her/zir!), no matter how hard and for how long he/she/ze have been trying. But one must try his/her/zirs absolute best before giving up.