A strange phenomenon has been happening in mathematics education in Ontario. As math scores for students fall, some Ontario teachers have been placing a greater emphasis on the role of race in math education.
In 2021, Ontario’s updated Grade 9 math curriculum included highly politicized statements like “Mathematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges,” and “a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions.”
In 2022, the Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Associations, a group of math consultants, coordinators and facilitators, ran a webinar featuring a pyramid of “White Supremacy in Math Education,” which described “covert” forms of white supremacy like “standardized testing” and the phrases “just stick to math,” “math is neutral because 2+2 = 4,” and “I don’t see colour in my math class.”
In December 2023, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Toronto ran a workshop called “Decolonizing Math Education,” which asked “How can we support students to understand and challenge settler-colonialism in its many forms within our math classes?”
The Court of Appeal for Ontario recently heard one of the most galling examples of this new ideology. A group of math teachers challenged a mandatory math test for teacher candidates that the province introduced in 2019.
The test required teacher candidates to answer math questions designed for students in Grades 3, 6 and 9, and to answer some questions about math pedagogy. The math questions were selected from existing questions given to students. The teacher candidates were given unlimited opportunities to re-write their answers until they passed.
The test seems like a reasonable safeguard to address falling student math scores. According to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, Canadian students’ math scores have fallen consistently since Canada first started participating in the assessment in 2000. Due to teacher shortages, teachers may be required to teach math even if that is not their area of training. Ontario’s test ensures teachers have the baseline competence and confidence to teach math.
But the group challenging the test argued it is a form of racial discrimination. They said the early test results showed teacher candidates from certain racial groups were failing at higher rates than white teacher candidates. This, they said, would result in fewer racialized teachers in Ontario.
On Nov. 28, the Court of Appeal rejected their argument. The court found that the initial number of test takers was too small to allow for conclusions to be drawn, and that there was insufficient data about test retakes. Later data showed that, of the 8,350 candidates who took the test once or more, 95 per cent passed, including 93 per cent from racialized groups.
One would assume that had the test continued to be available, the pass rate would have risen further with subsequent retakes. As a result, the Court of Appeal found it could not conclude that the math test had disproportionately impacted racialized teacher candidates’ entry into the teaching profession.
For now, we should accept this ruling as a refreshing dose of common sense from the court. But in the long term it evades some important questions.
Legal scholar Leonid Sirota wrote that this case bypassed many of the more challenging issues of substantive equality. With the opportunity for unlimited re-writes of questions designed for elementary school children, this particular math test is simply not hard enough to pass. The test, Sirota wrote, “does not ultimately prevent any significant number of people — of whatever race — from becoming teachers.” Those facts could present differently in a future case.
Math transcends linguistic and cultural barriers. A focus on race rather than skill will ultimately undermine the study of math. The famous German mathematician David Hilbert, who spoke against Germany’s purge of Jewish professors at Göttingen University in the 1930s, is credited with saying that “mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.”
Hilbert’s position is as true today as it was then. There is absolutely nothing about a person’s race that makes any individual better or worse at math. We cannot allow our institutions to adopt an ideology that cares more about a race-obsessed political ideology than learning, truth and knowledge.
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