I believe that teaching people to be financially literate is extremely important. When I asked my freshman year, now tenured economics prof roommate's opinion, he says it needs come through the math curriculum.
It's not hard, it just needs to start early, but even common core math doesn't do addition and subtraction of money until 5th grade, I believe. This is about five yrs too late
Mar 25, 2023·edited Mar 25, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd
I love math for those reasons. I used to enjoy my math questions because it was so easy to prove I was right when I got the answer. I love the logic and stability of it all.
I also personally think that God is truth and God is logic. People used to tell me the trinity is a mystery. But Jesus said he came to make the Father known to people. In Isaiah 1:18 God says, let us reason together. The word for reason can also be "prove." God is logical. We are supposed to be able to prove things.
We are made in God's image and want to prove things and reason. It's the people who want to sin who don't like logic and reasoning.
When they argue against logic, math, and use logical fallacies it proves to me they want to stay in their sin. I see any attack on math and logic to be an attack on God and reality itself.
I've been reading (and writing about) The Critical Turn in Education by Isaac Gottesman. The more thinking I do about it, the more convinced I am that the whole point of Critical Pedagogy (education as raising critical consciousness) is to turn students into personality disordered adults whose minds operate on gnosis rather than knowledge or reason (Josh's and James's podcasts are the two I listen to most religiously).
You are absolutely right: Critical Consciousness is evil. It wants to replace the joy of discovery and learning with a pat on the head that you get from the cult leaders when you say what they want you to say. It wants to replace psychological health with an enduring feeling of constant persecution that is only ever marginally eased when they force someone to bow before the cult. It wants to cripple a student's ability to makes sense of the world and to find meaning in it.
I'm not sure how you feel about other people linking their Substack to your articles, but I've written a fair bit about it over on mine.
"Thus there is one, and only one, situation where n, n+4, and n+8 are all prime, and that is 3, 7, and 11. 100% of the time, any other attempt to find two cousin primes will fail, because at least one number in any sequence of n, n+4, and n+8 will be divisible by 3. Thus the only one that works for all of them to be prime is the one that includes 3."
Is something that most teachers would not explain clearly at all. Yes you can write all this in algebra and so on and prove it but stating it clearly in this verbal manner is rare. I don't say I had a moment of understanding when I read it because I've done this proof before. BUT I never thought to summarise it like this and that is why non-mathematicians think maths is hard and esoteric. Your explanation puts it in the "oh that's really simple" category.
Presuming you do the same for other math issues, the kids you tutor in the subject are blessed to have you as a teacher
OT, but I can't locate the last place you mentioned it that caused me to eventually think of this, but the "genderbread unicorn" is really appropriate actually, **because unicorns aren't real**.
Even if someone objected to calling it "evil", it's certainly madness. But I guess that's just the ultimate oppressor of my cishet white maleness coming out.
I believe that teaching people to be financially literate is extremely important. When I asked my freshman year, now tenured economics prof roommate's opinion, he says it needs come through the math curriculum.
It's not hard, it just needs to start early, but even common core math doesn't do addition and subtraction of money until 5th grade, I believe. This is about five yrs too late
I love math for those reasons. I used to enjoy my math questions because it was so easy to prove I was right when I got the answer. I love the logic and stability of it all.
I also personally think that God is truth and God is logic. People used to tell me the trinity is a mystery. But Jesus said he came to make the Father known to people. In Isaiah 1:18 God says, let us reason together. The word for reason can also be "prove." God is logical. We are supposed to be able to prove things.
We are made in God's image and want to prove things and reason. It's the people who want to sin who don't like logic and reasoning.
When they argue against logic, math, and use logical fallacies it proves to me they want to stay in their sin. I see any attack on math and logic to be an attack on God and reality itself.
I've been reading (and writing about) The Critical Turn in Education by Isaac Gottesman. The more thinking I do about it, the more convinced I am that the whole point of Critical Pedagogy (education as raising critical consciousness) is to turn students into personality disordered adults whose minds operate on gnosis rather than knowledge or reason (Josh's and James's podcasts are the two I listen to most religiously).
You are absolutely right: Critical Consciousness is evil. It wants to replace the joy of discovery and learning with a pat on the head that you get from the cult leaders when you say what they want you to say. It wants to replace psychological health with an enduring feeling of constant persecution that is only ever marginally eased when they force someone to bow before the cult. It wants to cripple a student's ability to makes sense of the world and to find meaning in it.
I'm not sure how you feel about other people linking their Substack to your articles, but I've written a fair bit about it over on mine.
Holly, this summary of the cousin prime thing:
"Thus there is one, and only one, situation where n, n+4, and n+8 are all prime, and that is 3, 7, and 11. 100% of the time, any other attempt to find two cousin primes will fail, because at least one number in any sequence of n, n+4, and n+8 will be divisible by 3. Thus the only one that works for all of them to be prime is the one that includes 3."
Is something that most teachers would not explain clearly at all. Yes you can write all this in algebra and so on and prove it but stating it clearly in this verbal manner is rare. I don't say I had a moment of understanding when I read it because I've done this proof before. BUT I never thought to summarise it like this and that is why non-mathematicians think maths is hard and esoteric. Your explanation puts it in the "oh that's really simple" category.
Presuming you do the same for other math issues, the kids you tutor in the subject are blessed to have you as a teacher
Ironic that saying black and brown kids are disproportionately impacted by anything relies on the consistency and integrity of mathematics!
Holly, thanks for the excellent proof. As a math tutor myself I greatly appreciate the beauty of a good proof.
Wokeness is just another form of nihilism.
Like Alfred told Bruce Wayne - some men just want to watch the world burn.
7 is also interesting there for being the center of a series of sexy primes. 1, 7, 13. (Assuming one considers 1 to be prime, which some don't.)
OT, but I can't locate the last place you mentioned it that caused me to eventually think of this, but the "genderbread unicorn" is really appropriate actually, **because unicorns aren't real**.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/22white-supremacy-how-woke-ideologues-corrupted-canadas-math-curriculum/
Even if someone objected to calling it "evil", it's certainly madness. But I guess that's just the ultimate oppressor of my cishet white maleness coming out.
Well, this is the first piece you've done I've read and I had to upgrade to paid halfway through.
The part that got me I... restacked? Did the highlight thing and had to add it to Notes.
I think it's restack.
I am excited to see what else you have in your repertoire!
Personal stories are always the most powerful.