The War on Math Becomes a Fight Over Textbooks
Florida, for example, rejected 54 math textbooks of 132 submitted by publishers on account of political contentAbout a year and a half ago, I wrote a piece about the war on math, basically an effort to entrench the idea that there is no such thing as reality apart from politics. A slogan for various wars on math has been 2 + 2 = 5. That proposition originated in the totalitarian Soviet Union. It found its way into 1984, in which George Orwell (1903–1950) repudiated totalitarianism, and resurfaced in recent years in the current American education elite. One tactic used that is more subtle than outright messing with the number system is the inclusion of political issues in math problems. Current affairs writer Steven Tucker explains how it works: If you were an author of school textbooks Read More ›