Things You Didn’t Know But Should Have: Algebra Has a Liberal Bias
Thank you, Fox News. Listen to Fox news host Eric Bolling —
“But even worse is the way some textbooks are pushing the liberal agenda,” the Fox News host explained, pointing to an algebra worksheet that Scholastic says gives students “[i]nsight into the distributive property as it applies to multiplication.”
“Distribute the wealth!” Bolling exclaimed, reading the worksheet. “Distribute the wealth with the lovely rich girl with a big ole bag of money, handing some money out.”
Eric! Shuddup! Distributive property is what helps us do math in our heads. Okay, okay, not your head. I get that part. Distributive property has diddle squat to do to making Paris Hilton pay her fair taxes, although it probably should.
And it’s not just math that has a liberal bias. You know how kindergarten teachers say to play nice with each other and share? Pure communism. Fox news believes that it’s better that Little Leon grab all the blocks and hoard them. Screw this sharing stuff.
And, of course, there’s history with its liberal bias.
Bolling advised parents to read their children’s history books because his son’s textbook addressed the Iraq war “and they were very, very liberally biased, saying George Bush went in there because he heard there were weapons of mass destruction and they were never found. It was a very liberal bias to the history books.”
So, truth has a liberal bias.
I give up. No, I really do. The family tree does not fork at Fox news.
Thanks to Elizabeth Moon for the heads up.
The stupid…it burns….
1And I saw right in a middle school history book where it said the goverment is suppose to “promote general welfare” too. Right there right in the book.
2Reality has a liberal bias.
3I would love to see Fox News set up a private school for the children of their employees, based on the principles of Ayn Rand. My guess? It would look more like Lord of the Flies after a few years.
4When I was in high school …… algebra had a “gender” bias.
The female teacher…….. failed me……… passed my future husband…….. (who copied all my work).
I had to take it twice to finally get the “a”.
If you were to ask me what I remember about “algebra” I would have to answer “nothing”. If it has any kind of bias at all…… it’s beyond me. I always thought that there were probably easier ways to solve problems.
I do remember the “promote the general welfare” part of the history book.
I guess some folks….. these days…… think that’s some kind of “ism”.
5You can lead a Republican to water, but you can’t make them think.
6Praise the Lord for liberal bias; that is the only thing that will save this country.
7The Muslims developed al-Gebra. So it has a Muslim bias too.
These guys need to just admit they are too stupid to do math and science and stop blaming liberals and start blaming genetics.
8I never could wrap my brain around algebra and barely made it through basic math, for Pete’s sake … math made more sense to me once I graduated high school!! But I never could get algebra and there has never been a time in my life that I really ever needed it anyway … basic math, yes! Algebra, no! Shared this with a former school teacher in Facebook!
9I give up, too!! Can’t wait for the inauguration–you just know these loons are gonna spin that as well! 😉
10I was good at math and liked math…up until calculus. (Actually I have a sneaking fondness for vector calculus which I can’t do, but which has really nifty applications here and there…) So I can tell you that the only bias in math was gender bias (girls weren’t *supposed* to be good at math and science and I was told–by some teachers–that I should pretend to be bad at it so as not to embarrass the boys and ruin my chances to find a husband. Then my calculus prof told me in his experience girls couldn’t learn calculus and that kind of killed the joy.)
Anyway…anyone stupid enough not to know that “property” has different meanings in different contexts (likewise “distributive” has different meanings in different contexts) and who confuses those meanings is speaking Teabonics and too stupid to pronounce on arithmetic, let alone algebra. “Promote the general welfare” isn’t just in textbooks but in the Preamble to the Constitution, which we all had to memorize and recite. I suppose the Teabonics folks only memorize and recite the second amendment.
And as for the liberal bias to history on the matter of the invasion of Iraq under GWB…evidently, as has become common, the Teabonics speakers think facts are inherently liberal, and only their fantasies are conservative.
11Well, Algebra does come down to us from the Arabs and the numerals we use through the Arabs, probably originally Hindu.
12The knuckleheads at Faux Noise operating within the confines of their charter as propaganda organ for the Repcons have to see things in this light.Bolling might well be one of the dumbest among that group.
EMoon says the cons might have only memorized the 2nd amendment.If so they’ve only memorized their version- the one which omits, or disregards the well-regulated militia clause.
No, EMoon, the Teaboners don’t memorize the Second Amendment, because if they had, they wouldn’t keep so conveniently forgetting to mention the first half of it, the pesky bit about “well-regulated militias.”
13I think Roger Ailes is having a laugh riot at all of our expense.
There is no way the Fox talking heads could be as clueless and moronic as they portray themselves. I see Fox as an experiment in an ongoing reality series that Ailes thought of one night after having too many whiskeys and antihistamines. You know–sort of like the movie Truman, only the talent are gormless weasels who think they are great actors.
Sort of like when everyone found out O’Reilly’s liberal stalking attack dog Jesse Waters was found to have donated hundreds of dollars to the Obama campaign. Most of them are frauds–the rest stone cold idiots who’d say anything for a buck or to keep getting wingnut welfare.
14@Angela: I love the word “gormless!” It’s in a lot of the Georgette Heyer novels I like to read.
15I vividly remember the line from Peggy Sue got Married when she told her teacher she knew for a fact she would never need algebra again. I liked math, but didn’t think I’d ever need it in the creative field I’d chosen as a career. Then, by golly, I end up teaching retail merchandising, and retail math heavily depends on the basic equation R x B = P.
But I still find it easier to just do the straight multiplication than try the distributive property way.
I thought I remembered the phrase from math classes, but had to look it up to see what it actually was.
Sunuvagun, I’d been doing that for years, and thought it was cuz I was too stoopid in math to do it “right.” Go figure! Of course, we did have that psychotic WWII vet for a teacher. (they found later that the steel plate in his head had slipped… which explained a LOT – although he never should have been teaching in the first place.)
Just wow. Do you think he knew that what he was saying was total b.s. and was laughing all the way to the dunce cap? or was he actually that blindingly, staggeringly clueless?
And how many of his audience is actually that blindingly, staggeringly clueless? Scary proposition.
16People! Listen up! The distributive property of multiplication over addition (and subtraction) has nothing to do with algebra. It’s just a basic principle of how to do arithmetic. We learned it in 7th grade and algebra didn’t show it’s face for a whole year!
But this does explain a lot Repugnican policies where things don’t seem to add up. It’s like non-Euclidian geometry where you need to go into an alternatve reality which permits parallel lines to intersect each other.
17I use algebra in real life all the time. Including the distributive property.
How do you manage real life without algebra? It’s how you figure out how much paint to buy, what you need for a craft project (frex “math crafts” on the website), how to increase a recipe if you have twelve guests instead of four (OK, that’s basic arithmetic).
And calculus is just plain beautiful.
Thanks for JJ’s. A note of sanity.
18Vonda is right about using algebra all the time. Almost everyone does, but people don’t realize they’re using it because they don’t see a little “x” or a little “y.”
19How are these people allowed to be in charge of children?
http://www.wkyc.com/news/article/277343/45/Investigator-Students-gut-asbestos-filled-building
20‘…facts have a liberal bias…’ Colbert
‘…Truth has a liberal bias…’ J Jean.
Just saying.
21I have sent Mr. Bolling some other math terms for him to define. Here are his answers:
Algorithm – Anything deriving from Al Gore and his rhythm is evil
22Acute Angle – Sharon Angle
Annulus – Part of the gay agenda
Bisector – Part of the LBGT agenda
Cosine – Guaranteeing a loan on behalf of someone else
Divisor – Protects your eyes from the sun
Factor – True patriot Bill O’Reilly
Fraction – Liberal’s way of saying that you can’t have it all
Hexagon – When clergyman breaks an evil spell
Inequality – doesn’t exist
Irrational – liberals
Mean – liberals
Mixed numbers – liberal agenda – kind of like integration
Numerator – math geek’s lame superhero – can’t compare to Terminator
Pi – my favorite is apple
Protractor – I love John Deere
Range – Where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play
Remainder – no such thing once the democrats take everything from you
X-Axis – an unholy cabal of atheists, communists, and pagans trying to destroy Christmas by spelling it Xmas
Mark WINS!
23Mark, You forgot:
Imaginary numbers – The number of votes that President Obama got…TWICE!
24I was an algebra teacher for 16 years. I’ll admit there might have been a slight liberal bias in my classroom, but it had nothing to do with math.
25Liberal has an algebra bias. I suspect it because we ain’t into stupid.
26Al jbr as I told my kids was simply a code used by certain middle easterners to conduct business. They deliberately made it hard to work with cuz they didn’t trust the other guy. That “code” thing caught on with son. Daughter had no use for anything that was created to be dodgy.
Grand-daughter is a math genius. She suspected by the time she was in 3rd grade that all arithmetic problems are looking for “x”. And she went on from there. . .
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