Maths has traditionally been one of the most difficult areas of the curriculum: no matter how hard they try, some kids just don’t get it. In consequence, any number of innovative compensatory strategies have been employed by educators down the years, from playing fun number-games with toddlers to letting teens use calculators – and, now, even trying to facilitate inter-species communication with numerate cauliflowers in the classroom.
This unique method is today recommended by Rochelle Gutiérrez, a leading U.S. Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, who has helped write official guidelines and standards for the training of America’s future maths teachers. Despite having no actual qualifications in maths – her degree is in biology, which is even more frightening when you consider her opinions about sentient vegetables – Gutiérrez has still found fame as the inventor of a new sub-field of the discipline named mathematx (pronounced ‘math-e-ma-tesh’).
This is a new, even more extreme form of so-called ‘Ethnomathematics’, a politically motivated non-subject which pushes the identitarian lie that children of different races possess innately different ‘mathematics identities’ to such a degree that it is actually possible for white kids and black kids to legitimately end up calculating different answers to the precise same sums, as their brains and souls are wired so differently from one another, numerically-speaking.
Gutiérrez herself goes even further than this, though, hoping to, as one sceptical 2018 American headline put it, use her concept of mathematx to “fix pro-human bias in math” – even to the extent of getting plant-life involved.
Cabbage Learns From Cauliflower
Gutiérrez lays out her curious ideas about Brassica oleracea var. botrytis, the Romanesco cauliflower, in a 2017 plenary paper published online by the actual U.S. Department of Education, named ‘Living Mathematx: Towards a Vision for the Future’ – and what a vision it is, too!
The Romanesco cauliflower enjoys a distinctive and striking fractal leaf-structure, so could actually be used as a valid classroom teaching-aid, illustrating things like Mandelbrot Sets and Fibonacci Sequences. Yet, in her native wisdom, Mx Gutiérrez does so much more. Rochelle ostentatiously self-identifies as ‘Latinx’, thus lending her an indigenous background of some kind, perhaps being part-descended from the original South American Indians who populated the New World prior to Spanish colonisation.
Gutiérrez clearly views Latinx people as being inherently in touch with the forces of Nature around them – or “other-than-human-persons”, as she prefers to call them. Apparently, “Indigenous knowledges recognise that we are part of a system of intelligent and sentient beings, also known as persons, with interconnected spirits, including rocks and bodies of water. Plants, for example, have lived on this planet for millions of years before humans … [and are] our older brothers/sisters.”
In order to “decentre the field’s overreliance on Whitestream views”, Gutiérrez seeks to both “reconceptualise what counts as mathematics in the first place” and also who gets to be a mathematician at all. The classic idea of a human being sitting down and performing calculations is just a white, Western stereotype – indeed, it is just an anthropocentric human stereotype, which must perforce be dismantled.
“On many levels, mathematics [as opposed to mathematx] operates as whiteness,” she infamously opined back in 2017. As mathematics therefore necessarily becomes redefined as mathematx in the name of decolonising the racist old curriculum, we also have the opportunity to redefine the mathematxn too – as our esteemed “older brother/sister” the cauliflower, for example.
What a Performance!
Being well-versed in Critical Theory (she’s an American academic, remember), Gutiérrez is enamoured of the work of the leading Gender/Queer Studies luminary Judith Butler, who famously argued gender and sex were purely performative in nature – hence it allegedly being possible for a man to suddenly magically ‘become’ a woman simply by donning a dress and some lipstick, Eddie Izzard-style. Women ‘perform’ their womanhood by dressing up as women, ergo a man can ‘perform’ himself into being a woman too, just by adopting the correct costume, attitudes and mannerisms.
Might it be possible, then, to likewise apply Butler’s idea towards numbers, and say maths is itself also a form of ‘performance’? Old-fashioned mathematics “tends to be thought of as a noun”. However, Gutiérrez’s mathematx “is performance, and therefore a verb”. It is in fact “an intervention-in-reality (action)”, not “a representation-in-reality (explanation)”.
Simply by existing, all persons (human and otherwise), are performing maths, as with the fractal-like structure of the Romanesco cauliflower. So, kids of different races may naturally ‘perform’ maths in different ways – the boring old traditional method of performing calculations in a logical, rational and systematic fashion is really just the way white, straight, males have long performed the subject. Teaching children this is the only way to ‘perform’ maths in schools is just another way white men have tried to colonise the very minds and souls of all other races.
Henceforth, children should be taught other means of ‘performing’ maths too, drawn from other races both human and non-human. Latinx kids, for example, may be more naturally in tune with Nature, and thus better able to learn the valuable lessons of the cauliflower: “There may be things we cannot yet access or understand because we are a young species. Other [older] persons [e.g. cauliflowers] may have ways of accessing information that can be helpful for us.”
Planting the Seeds of Ignorance
Gutiérrez doesn’t specifically say how Latinx-brained pupils are supposed to engage in contact with the cauliflowers, perhaps because this is not in any way actually possible. However, as many plants contain male and female sex-organs simultaneously, they are considered by Gutiérrez to be somewhat ‘queer’ (she should work at Kew Gardens these days), thus breaking down the traditional male-female binary allegedly imposed on humanity by bigoted white colonialism.
By considering plants, rocks and water as people, the ‘human/non-human binary’ is also deconstructed, which will facilitate the breaking down of mental barriers between the human and non-human worlds, and allow us to “consider the shared consciousness between all living beings, the greater unity to which we belong”. This will allow for “a kind of multi-science teaching, seeing from multiple views”, or “epistemic plurality”, if you prefer. Hence, maths questions no longer necessarily need enjoy a single correct answer to them, it would appear: “The value of Nepantla [An Aztec term for the supposed innate Latinx ability to perceive the interstitial space between two worlds] is reminding us to seek multiple realities and to hold those in view because they help us generate new knowledge.”
Henceforth, what really counts is not that they can successfully work out that 2+2=4, but that a budding young junior mathematxn enjoys doing their own personal form of maths, and finds it beautiful in some way, as the humble Brassica oleracea var. botrytis surely does when flowering out in joyous fractal fashion: “Mathematx is an activity that cannot be extracted from the living being(s) in the process of solving problems and/or experiencing joy – the mathematxn.”
Future Marxist Mathx cannot be separated from the mathematxn any more than poetry can from the poet or a song from the singer. And nobody expects any two given poets to produce the exact same verse, do they? That would be plagiarism. This is why Latinx-loving Gutiérrez so loves adding the letter ‘x’ in words – it represents the unknown variable, and could be literally anything, a truly revolutionary concept. She even name-checks a well-known black nationalist revolutionary in support of this idea – that’s right, ‘Malcolm X’ was actually ‘Malcolm Algebra’.
“Current versions of what count as ‘beautiful’ in mathematics tend not to reflect the diversity in our world. Instead, they tend to relate to truth… implying universals rather than uniqueness/expression that would align with performance or a plurality of epistemologies.” Just imagine a world in which every kid in the class gives a different answer to the same sum, and this no longer means they have been ineptly taught by a far-Left lunatic, but is instead joyously embraced as an example of mathemtxcal diversity in action! Is this really what Gutiérrez means by all this? It is hard to say, as her essay is written in fluent woke academese, which is to say, unparsable quasi-Marxist gibberish.
Either way, if the malign legacy of white colonialism could only stop suppressing their unique forms of Ethnomathematx, who knows what numerical wonders newly-liberated non-white students could achieve, “in this universe or in others”?
A Revolution in Learning
“For me, mathematx is a political statement about reclaiming the persons who have been lost when humans remain at the centre,” says Gutiérrez. It will teach pupils to “recognise the violence that is justified when some are viewed to be more human than others.” Does this mean a vegetable, cereal, or fruit-based world-revolution may one day occur, then? Will today’s sickeningly human-dominated Earth one day instead become the Planet of the Grapes?
Not necessarily, but teaching impressionable youngsters that cabbages can ‘perform’ fractals might help foster political revolution of a different, altogether more humanly Left-wing kind, as it will aid a demented political parallel being drawn by activist teachers between the colonialist exploitation of crops and of non-white indigenous humans alike: “like American Indians who were stripped of their lands and communities and forced to live in boarding schools, plants are yanked from their families and forced to assimilate into Western ways of doing things (e.g, to become suburban gardens).” Yes, this womxn really should work at Kew these days.
Just like every other subject in our increasingly over-politicised Western curricula, maths too is now evidently due to be subverted into yet another vehicle for Leftist agitprop.
One of the most influential ideas of Judith Butler, the Gender Studies theorist whose work helped inspire Rochelle Gutiérrez in the first place, was that of ‘the politics of parody’, in which an entire existing concept or social institution is forcibly deconstructed by virtue of making a sort of parodic joke out of it, much as the notion of a ‘woman’ can be successfully parodied through the cartoonish figure of a drag-queen – and that is certainly what Butler’s 21st century Latinx disciple has helped develop here, a mere parody of the concept of maths.
The final section of Gutiérrez’s 2017 paper specifically suggests children be ‘un-taught’ any actual maths they might come to school already knowing, or as she prefers to frame it, “students would have opportunities to unlearn their epistemological arrogance” in class. And kids who can’t add up should never be chided, as “ignorance might not just be a lack of knowledge but an active refusal to know because it disrupts one’s previous beliefs. If we start early with young learners, it may be easier to disrupt what humans have come to consider normal in the practice of mathematics” – the ability to actually perform it properly in the first place, for instance.
In our species’ strange forthcoming mathematxl future, why do I gain the distinct impression that the correct answer to every sum will ultimately end up being ‘1984’?
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s and Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets, which is out now.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
26c here in S.Wales on an app, which also predicts 32c “At Noon”. Seeing as it’s noon already, it’s not looking good for Mystic Meg. The car thermometer says 25.5c.
We already know how this will go; “There was a switch in wind patterns, thankfully bringing the temperature down before it was too late!”
I wonder if anyone from the BBC will ask the very pertinent question. ‘If you can be out by 5c plus over a three day period, what confidence should we put in predictions of 1.5c over 30 years.’
It’s 33c in London at Noon. Hot, but a long way off the forecasts.
I suspect they give a worst case scenario to cover themselves (possibly mindful of Michael Fish).
There seems to be a similar thing when there is any possibility of lightning.
For what it’s worth, we were about one degree celsius below what the BBC predicted for a nearby city.
A worst case scenario for the BBC is not having high temperatures to justify their scare mongering.
More probably because the BBC decided long ago to abandon their legal Charter for impartiality, and become climate alarmists.
Bristol BS9 mid-day:
In the sun (behind a white screen) 28.8C
In the bushes 23.5C.
(results from wireless thermometers)
28.3 here in Gloucestershire by the river Severn. Shaded temp gauge my garden. Incidentally the pressure must be dropping because my electronic gizmo is showing rain!
3 fine days and a thunderstorm? Probably.
28C in Swansea a mile from town centre, at 12:20
predicted highest at 16:00 34C
32 degrees in Thames Valley – meant to be 35 by now.
32 is really nothing exceptional.
35 (car thermometer and weather app) in IG9. Forecast dropped to 37.
34 degrees in the shade, Hertfordshire.
Car thermometer in full sun at 12;30 says 29. So far it’s a hot summer’s day, nothing exceptional, this is in Warwickshire.
33C at 12,30pm in Kent.(Weather app.)
Railway restrictions are due to possibility of rails buckling, not so much from high air temperature, but continuous direct overhead Sumer sunshine.
In my experience this is not unusual in summertime on very sunny days.
I think it is a feature of continuous welded rails to give smoother, quieter ride, rather than use of fishplates and expansion joints of former days.
And they haven’t worked out how to build expansion joints into these yet – after all these years!
It’s 28.5 in Mitcham, South London at 12.45pm Met Office says 34
Rural Herefordshire
12:50 AND 27c (via app) – forecast claims should already be 34 on way to 36….
30c here on the Wirral – have kept my winter woollies on until the UKHSA tell me otherwise!
31.7C a couple of miles southeast from Bedford, thermometer in the shed on a north-facing wall of the house. Timed at 1pm.
BBC weather app says 35C for the same location.
28c in Fife. Imagine it feels very hot in the sunshine (not been out yet) but it’s not uncomfortably hot indoors with the windows open and half a curtain drawn.
34.3 °C just north of Swindon, around 13:05. At least it’s not humid outside at the same time. Some years ago, I had some experience of it being hot and humid together, in Hong Kong.
In addition to the home reading, this site is potentially interesting: https://www.westweather.co.uk/ It’ll have the daily extremes on that page. They are not forecasting anything above 34 though. It’s based on the American GFS model, I think.
Bristol BS9 13:20:
In the sun (behind a white screen) 41.9C (was 28.8C at mid-day)
In the bushes now 28.2C (was 23.5C at mid-day).
(results from wireless thermometers)
Car inside garage with open door 27.0C.
33c in Huddersfield on car themometer, about spot on with the forecast, however I have not read any of the government public safety advice so I am probably dead and in hell.
Using our weatherstation we recording 35.4 in Somerset today. You can check out the weather station network here: https://app.weathercloud.net/map
On the Peak District Borders, we’re at 35.2c Maybe another degree as the afternoon wears on, but thats the max for today. Supposed to be 38c plus here tomorrow, (the Met Office had 42c…) but then 22c all week, so this a short, freak event.
So I had the BBC news on this morning in the background (I know, I know, apologies), and they had what seemed like 30 continues minutes of unrelenting fear porn “news” devoted to our apocalyptic and “unprecedented heat wave”.
Scientists, meteorologists, self-proclaimed “experts”, businesses and ordinary people all stepped up with opinions peddling the climate change narrative.
A reporter at a campsite (live) interviewed a couple of campers, all discussing how hot it was. Then the reporter asked a lady camper something on the lines: “I bet it was really hot last night!”, of which the lady replied: “Well actually, I was a bit cold, I had to put a jumper on.”
This was followed by an errm, uhm and a quick pan away from the lady with a passing, hurried comment from the reporter to the effects: “Well, anyway, it’s gonna be hot.” That genuinely made me chuckle.
Ah BBC, the perils of live reporting with the unrehearsed general public not eschewing the prevailing narrative, eh? Queue adding campsites to the list of live interview scenarios requiring a 5 second delay.
33c full sun south coast near Worthing
Not going to mention the temperature here but I want to comment on the responses from “experts” to Dominic Raab’s sensible comments about being careful. Cancer campaigners said it was irresponsible for him to encourage us to enjoy the weather but take precautions like drinking a lot and using sunscreen. They claimed that he didn’t go far enough in his warnings. STOP TREATING US LIKE CHILDREN!!!!!!! Raab’s comments are perfectly sensible, most are capable of reading the instructions on a bottle of sunscreen and I’m sick of so many announcements to keep “hydrating” (what happened to “drinking”?).
Rant over. Enjoy the day everyone.
What have coronavirus campaigners said about depressed levels of vitamin D because of people not getting enough sun, or not benefitting from it if they do get it due to excessive use of sun cream, I wonder?
True story, apparently – companies selling bottles of water were banned from describing their product as being “hydrating”. Due to EU rules or something. These pharmaceutical companies…
Wokingham peaked at 35.5 and is now 34.8 . the forecast had been 39c.
http://www.wokinghamweather.co.uk/
33 degrees here in Oaksey right now.
36.8 maximum at 13:56 today in full sun at the bottom of the garden. I am just south of Bolton.
That’s measured on a half-decent Bresser Weather Station.
For comparison the Apple Weather app on my phone was predicting a high of 34c today.
I took the reading I gave above from the 24h high reading as measured by the weather station. It’s placed in the open at the bottom of the garden in direct sun and not screened so it wouldn’t count as an official reading but it’s accurate for what it’s worth.
38.8c just now (15:07pm)
Inside in the shade, south-facing room is 27c
33 here in Kent at a push. If it gets to 40 my arse is a hippodrome as they say.
You’ll never know if it reaches 40℃ as it’s impossible for human beings to survive at such temperatures. Good luck.
They’re all going to DIE!
Here in West Somerset it’s 29C in the shade and 31C in the sun.
And we’re still alive!!
School thermometer gives extreme unprecedented crisis reading of 31℃. Please help. We are literally dying in West Yorkshire.
Saddleworth 14:18 at the front of the house and in full sunshine 35°.
An app on the ‘phone shows outside temperature at 33°.
App on iPhone (weather-station based) says 34C, 4C short of maximum predicted yesterday. Gut feeling says (after moving through the sun for a while) warm but not hot, maybe a little more than yesterday. Absolutely nothing compared to temperatures I have already endured in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Another emergency of national headlines about one.
Out of curiosity: Does anyone have an idea what a ferocious temperature is supposed to be? The number looks as peaceful as all others do.
From one of my Twitter followers: At 14.25 BST in Temple Cowley, Oxford: North-facing location outside, away from buildings and concrete, in the shade: 32 degrees Celsius. South-facing In direct sunshine: 37 degrees. Temperature inside house, in north-facing room: 33 degrees. Thermometer is an alcohol thermometer, uncalibrated with any other thermometer, so reading taken with that in mind.
So it’s 27/81 in Glasgow. Taps aff weather as we say here.
Warwickshire, 34C measured on car thermometer in dappled shade under a tree at 3pm.
So 27.5 degrees here in sunny south Hampshire, 29 degrees predicted, but we’ve already peaked.
Met Office shows 33C on top of Swansea City FC stadium at 15:00
10 mins walk uphill I have 28C in the shade.
Hi there In Colkirk mid Norfolk .Some numbers for you .
Midday fcast 27c actual 28c
1.00pm fcast 28c actual 30c
2.00pm fcast 28c actual 31c
3.00pm fcast 35c actual 31c
Actuals taken from a shaded ,basic B and q garden thermometer ,just cross checked with another from indoors and reading seem accurate ish .
At 14:00 in West Sussex (not far from Gatwick airport) my car thermometer said 34.5’C. I’m sure the “official” Gatwick weather station – at the end of the runway where the engines rev up – will report much higher.
Car thermometers are rather dodgy – if the vehicle has been cooking in the sun it will naturally record a high temperature. Travelling from Oxfordshire to Somerset today the car thermometer read 35C as we set off; after a few miles of actual travel it had reduced to 28C.
Indeed they can. A few years ago I had one with an obvious temperature gauge fault that gave a false output on display,, and another one (in the same car) that affected the coolant temperature gauge, and resulted in the engine dropping into it’s “limp mode”. It was one of the older Honda Civics, and in limp mode the max engine speed was 2000 rpm – so it could run at 70 mph on the level.
These are the sort of temperatures that humans are designed for and often seek out by flying to exotic locations. It’s actually really nice to have the good weather come to you for a change.
Hi Toby, just tried to vote for some comments on here and get message that I had already voted for them.Bit difficult to believe as they were new with zero votes!!!.This has happened before I hope the met office or 77th are not trying to downplay reality or is it the mighty manboob himself Billy boy…
Try refreshing the page… that usually works.
At 1530 it is 33.3C inside my north-facing shed against the north wall of the house.
BBC app says 37C for my location a few miles SE of Bedford.
Car said 37C while driving, sensor is about 9″ above ground so tends to read the warmer air above the tarmac.
4.00 pm Batley Forecast 34; Actual 27.5
16:30h LE16 near Market Harborough. Outdoor thermometer in shade, NNW facing 39°C
Just checked BBC weather app. Says it should be 36°C.
West Glos by the Severn – was 35.7 at 3pm (highest), now dropping swiftly. Currently 34.4.
However, pressure is still dropping. I wonder if this is going to break sooner than they think?
Quite likely; tomorrow there could be a large shift in temperature – say at least 10 °C lower than now, with a north westerly wind.
Liz Bentley who apparently is Chief Exec of the Met Office said on Talk TV today that 1976 (with 16 consecutive days over 30 C) was a “localised” heatwave. Really Liz! They are shameless these people. 1976 is inconvenient for them so they come up with “localised”.
All of the UK’s weather is imported from elsewhere so she must know that that is nonsense.
52 C standing here in the conservatory with the doors closed!
But seriously, this is most odd, since the BBC weather website usually gets it bang on for our locality. I wonder if they plan on continuing with exaggerating the weather whenever it becomes unusual.
They have a tendency for “defensive forecasting” since Autumn 1987, when they had a bad press for the storm damage in London and the surrounding areas.
That is interesting
At 5.50pm it’s 34.5 outside in the shade here in Haxby (near York) compared to 34/35 or 36 depending on which weather app I look at!.
36.6C in semi-shade at 6pm in Cheshire. 38.7C was the highest today. Put up the marquee for the local beer festival this morning. Slightly sweaty but nobody died. Didn’t even wear any sun cream – what I fool I am.
It’s sun screen that promotes skin cancer: intense cocktail of chemicals to put on the skin, add radiation and hey presto! Best to limit exposure and as you say not daub yourself in that stuff, even the nice smelling ones!
At 1800 temperature in the shaded shed is 35.1C having peaked at 35.3C 15 minutes earlier.
BBC weather app shows 37C for a few miles SE of Bedford.
By the River Wharfe it’s 28.
The guy next to me is on the phone to someone, telling him that,
“London is currently the hottest place on earth. Yeah. Amazing, mate. Yeah, that’s what they’re saying. Crazy, innit. Hotter than the Sahara they’re saying. I wouldn’t want to be in London now, mate.”
PS in the shade, obviously, under the trees. Lovely spot. Bring your vulnerable relatives.
Bit hot here in Wiltshire/Dorset borders…cucumber sandwiches curled up…it’s just after 7am, probably about 25C.
0900, shaded north facing shed currently at 28.7C
BBC observations says about 27C.
What a great country we live in now (not)! As soon as a blip or even a hint of ‘danger’ appears, all our public services, who are supposed to *support* us in these times, shut up shop.
My Weather Channel app says it is 37 at circa noon today where I am in North London. My Oregon Scientific digital thermometer, sitting in the shade just outside on the balcony reads 29. In the US, I recall the use of a Heat Index that factored in the humidity. In the winter you have the actual temperature and then the wind chill effect. Yet again we need to question the narrative.
35 degrees in Hurst, Berkshire, just down the road from Theresa May’s constitutency office, at 12:30. According to my App it is 36, but its not, and they still have the forecast for this time at 37, but its not that either.
Bedfordshire – Tuesday 15:15 39 on my iPhone weather app.
Aberystwyth
Monday max 31.4
Tuesday briefly 33.2 midday then 31
Measured in a no-sun spot but against the house that never gets sun
Went to Bournemouth for a jolly left home it was 30° at 9:30 by 10:30 the thermometer hit 32° along the coast. Sensible precautions in and out of the shade and drinking plenty of water – even had an ice cream on the beach. Heading back to the car (we’d parked in a multistorey) it was a comfortable 26°. A little uncomfortable heading home when the thermometer hit 35° full sun but gave the children an ice-lolly and sent them to bed with a fan next to then – we had a lovely day there was no need for the alarmist reporting.