So there's a survey making the rounds

[conuly]

wherein people were asked if kids should be taught Arabic numerals (also known as the numbers we use in our day-to-day lives) and they said no.

This definitely proves a degree of mathematical ignorance among American adults. It doesn't, however, prove that mathematical ignorance correlates with Islamophobia, xenophobia, or any related condition. Many of those same individuals would probably have also said that children shouldn't be taught base 10 numerals or positional notation either - "Just teach the kids plain math like I learned!" - and, in fact, many of those folks do rail against the teaching of place value, not understanding that YES they were taught this in school and NO you cannot understand basic arithmetic using our number system without it. (It would be interesting, as a control, to see what the answers were if asked if children should be taught Roman numerals. Then again, those of us who know what they are might say no, don't bother!)

Note: I'm not saying that this particular ignorance does NOT correlate with that particular bigotry, just that the question, bare like that, doesn't prove it.

Comments

[shy_magpie]

It rather reminds me of when a smartass at my school did a survey asking if we supported women's suffrage, only he got some ESL kids to do the actual questioning and even those of us who knew the word weren't sure if the kids meant to say suffering or suffrage. Like the survey you described, it smacks more of trying to embarrass people for not knowing the word than proving anything.

If you were trying to prove Islamophobia in education I'd look into how many teachers are told to stick to the subject when teaching about Pythagoras vs Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (the Muslim scholar who literally wrote the book on Algebra). As much time as I spent hearing about that cult, only a passing reference was made to the fact that there even were Muslim scholars much less that we could trace much of what we were learning back to them. Guess which one got a parent complaint.

[kengr]

Back in junior high someone came up with a neat trick.

You walk up to someone and ask if they'd like a five-dollar bill. When they said yes, you hand them a piece of paper that says "You owe me $5"

[rhoda_rants]

I took a class in Eastern religion in college, and everything was groovy when we were talking Tao and Buddhism and Hindu, but when she got to Islam? ~YIKES.~ She made it suuuuuuper obvious how awful and misogynistic she thought it was, like every other culture ever doesn't have problems with how it treats women. It was . . . disappointing.

[shy_magpie]

Its bad enough when its coming from the students or parents like in the previously described scenarios, you'd think a teacher would be able to at least get they aren't supposed to be passing on their bias.

[rhoda_rants]

Yeah. She had ahem quite a few biases she was not shy about sharing. I still learned a lot, because there was a lot of independent reading involved, but it was frustrating.

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[conuly]

I don't want to guess.