Thursday, June 21, 2018

When people complain about what's coming out of universities,

they usually wind up being called anti-intellectual, or accused of 'hating learning'.  However, being pissed about nonsense like this has nothing to do with a dislike of learning:
In an abstract for the book, Ernest claims that although he does “acknowledge that mathematics is a widespread force for good,” “there is significant collateral damage caused by learning mathematics.”

According to Ernest, this “collateral damage” happens in three ways. First, he argues, the styles of thinking involved with mathematics are “detached” and “calculated” ones, which value “rules, abstraction, objectification, impersonality, unfeelingness, dispassionate reason, and analysis” — which he claims “can be damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues.”

The second problem, he explains, is that “the applications of mathematics in society can be deleterious to our humanity unless very carefully monitored and checked.”
...
Finally, Ernest claims, “the personal impact of learning mathematics on learners’ thinking and life chances can be negative for a minority of less successful students, as well as potentially harmful for successful students.” Ernest continues to explain that math is often viewed as “masculine,” and that that can essentially make it difficult for women to deal with learning it.
A very short version of this would be "There's not enough feels in math!"  Which is so freaking stupid I'm stopping here.


2 comments:

Rob said...

"Freaking stupid" sounds about right.

Anonymous said...

Adding feeling to studies is what destroyed the social sciences. If you look something like 80% of social science studies end up getting retracted because of fraud or outright faking results.

I for one do not want to cross a bridge designed by feelings rather than rules and reason.

Exile1981