Adrian Riskin 🇵🇸🍉<p>The formal reasoning style associated with mathematics teaches ... that decontextualization and abstraction are the only valid routes to truth, that the only correct way to understand anything is by analyzing relationships between abstract concepts, because this is how mathematics is taught...</p><p>For instance, the meaning of the slogan “Black lives matter” relies on its place in a deep and broad historical context involving chattel slavery, police violence, capitalism, racism, prisons, and on and on and on. Part of the context is the understanding that society already acts as if white lives matter without anyone having to say it out loud. Lacking that context, or mapped to a different context, the phrase means something very different. And once decontextualized it becomes conceptually equivalent rather than intentionally and implicitly contrasted to statements like “all lives matter” or “white lives matter.” Even wildly skewed transformations like “blue lives matter” move from absurdity to debatability, which is a win for capital’s stability.</p><p>Victims of American mathematics education may be powerfully tempted to refute such nonsense on its own terms, i.e. abstractly rather than by screaming out the concrete truth that’s obvious to anyone who shares the context.</p><p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Capitalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Capitalism</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Anarchism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Anarchism</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Mathematics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Mathematics</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/MathEducation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MathEducation</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/MathematicsEducation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MathematicsEducation</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/PoliceViolence" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PoliceViolence</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/ACAB" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ACAB</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/PoliceAbolition" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PoliceAbolition</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Abolition" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Abolition</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/BLM" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BLM</span></a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/BlackLivesMatter" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BlackLivesMatter</span></a> </p><p><a href="https://chez-risk.in/2023/04/05/why-are-children-forced-to-study-mathematics-at-gunpoint" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">chez-risk.in/2023/04/05/why-ar</span><span class="invisible">e-children-forced-to-study-mathematics-at-gunpoint</span></a></p>