In March, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) – an independent body which oversees standards and quality in UK universities – released new guidance on curriculum design in mathematics. This guidance states:
‘Values of EDI [Equality Diversity and Inclusion] should permeate the curriculum and every aspect of the learning experience.’
At least on the face of it, this guidance seems odd. University lecturers are not teaching racist courses on calculus or sexist proofs of the prime number theorem. There is, therefore, no need for the QAA to tell them that they shouldn’t do this.
Can saying 2+2=4 be racist? Astonishingly, there is a hardcore of postmodernists who would say that it can. One such argument is: human knowledge can never be perfect; rational argument is only one way of knowing; rational argument was promoted in the enlightenment as a means of denigrating indigenous ways of knowing and oppressing colonised peoples; therefore saying that 2+2=4 smacks of white supremacy. This is a fringe view, but it is a real one. An historian speaking at the London Mathematical Society this week sincerely proposed that we should question the claim that 2+2=4, though she did not expand on her reasons.
Nevertheless, the majority of those calling for an EDI overhaul of mathematics are not seeking to change mathematics only the mindset of mathematics students. This though is in many ways even more alarming.
University lecturers are not teaching racist courses on calculus or sexist proofs of the prime number theorem