The Derangement Olympics

I regard the whole Northwestern United States to be among the global hubs of our present derangements. This week it emerged that Seattle 's school board has decided even maths must be subjected to the same numbing and unthinking orthodoxy of our time. In particular that mathematics must – like everything else – be seen through the prism of racism and oppression. Thus as the Seattle Public Schools guidelines for maths education show, students in Seattle schools will be invited to consider questions such as "Where does Power and Oppression show up in our math experience?" or "How has math been used to resist and liberate people and communities of color from oppression?" The cleverer students will realise that there is a "correct" answer to the questions, whether or not those answers are true – as there is to every other question of our age. They'll work out that the answer to every question posed by the Seattle authorities will always and everywhere be the same: "more diversity". But the problem is not with the smarter students, who like most smart people will always find a way to navigate around the lies and dogmas of their age, but the less intelligent applicants. A rather basic knowledge of maths would help such people and come in very handy in their lives: in ordering their finances, and working out their day-to-day interactions with others. If they do not pick up these basics at school, then it is highly unlikely that they will pick them up at some later stage, the education system offering the best chance anyone ever has to surpass their forebears. How disturbing it is to learn that instead, even in a discipline like maths, students will be cocooned and imprisoned in the lies of their age rather than being given the chance to escape them. [Douglas Murray (2019), UnHerd]