Washington Post's Dana Milbank offers the ultimate parody of Florida's banned math textbooks.

[Towlie]

Last edited Wed Apr 20, 2022, 12:23 PM - Edit history (1)

We've made a few jokes here and there about how a mathematics textbook could possibly be offensive to conservatives, but I doubt that any of our comments could match this article. It's definitely worth a read:

DeSantis saves Florida kids from being indoctrinated with math

Edit: All you need to get through the washingtonpost.com paywall is NoScript with washingtonpost.com set to "Untrusted".

[niyad]

1. wapo free trial paywall.

[HUAJIAO]

2. Sorry can't read it. Pay Wall

[Towlie]

6. Please see my edited opening post.

 
←

To me the article seems too long to copy and reproduce here, although someone else might decide to do that.

[Roland99]

3. Passages....

But then I opened the 2020 edition of one of the banned textbooks, Cengage’s “Precalculus With Limits” — and was horrified by the “indoctrinating concepts” I saw. If this is Precalculus With Limits, I’d hate to see the kind without limits.

At a time when Floridians by law “don’t say gay,” much less “trans,” this banned book brazenly teaches about the “Transitive Property of Equality.” Not only are impressionable minds taught about the “transformation of functions,” but also they are even indoctrinated in “describing transformations” and — appallingly — “sketching transformations.”

At a time when DeSantis is trying to restore the traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, “Precalculus With Limits” has endless references to “sin” and “polynomials” — even “multiplying polynomials.” On Page 318, for example, it tells children to believe that “sin x takes on its full range of values.” Valuing sin! On Page 734, incredibly, it orders children to “sketch the graph of the degenerate conic.” Disgusting.

At a time when Florida is banning the acknowledgment of gender fluidity or any identity outside male and female, this subversive textbook unabashedly tells suggestible children that such things exist as “reciprocal identities,” “cofunction identities,” “additive identity property” and even “multiplicative identity property.”

[rurallib]

12. thanks that is hilarious

[rurallib]

13. thanks that is hilarious

[MissMillie]

23. Rebellious kids everywhere will now be trying to get their hands on this banned book...

... to read about the latus rectum.

[PCIntern]

4. Wow!

Terrific. He hasn’t written that creatively since he was writing fyThe New Republic what seems like eons ago

[BlueGreenLady]

5. I read somewhere that DeSantis is probably getting kickbacks (donations)

from Textbook publishers for getting rid of the old math textbooks and buying the new ones. Does anyone have any links to investigations of this?

[babylonsister]

7. That's the assumption. I read it here...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216609725

[BlueGreenLady]

8. Thanks babylonsister! n/t

[momta]

16. Yup. Definitely in it for the money. n/t

[Nevilledog]

9. No paywall link

https://archive.ph/Z4Vzk

[scipan]

20. Thank you.

[underpants]

10. Answer: It was rigged.

Milbank has done his research

[Wednesdays]

11. Oh man, I am beside myself!

[Mme. Defarge]

14. OMG!

Dana has truly surpassed himself. Is there a mathematical formula for that?

[aggiesal]

15. Well it does use arabic numerals. ...

Do I need the sarcasm thingee?

[mgardener]

17. It would be funny

If it weren't true.

I really can envision non math people, going through these textbooks, seeing certain words and dismissing the books.

[progree]

18. DISGUSTING: "The focal chord perpendicular to the axis of the parabola is called the latus rectum,"

It goes on to tell Florida’s children to “find the length of the latus rectum.”

https://archive.ph/Z4Vzk

[scipan]

21. "I don't even want to know how that is done."

[Hekate]

19. Millbank has surpassed himself. This is hysterical. nt

[Hortensis]

22. Thanks, Towlie. I skipped this and what a shame to miss this new classic.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

24. All the banned math books had equals signs in them. Nothing scares a fascist like equality.

Link to tweet