Max Genest - February 05, 2026


Ontario's Government Decided Math Is Racist

Topics
CRRP in Ontario schools
Hosted by
Max Genest
Mentioned
Waterloo Peel
How The Conservative Convention Exposed Its Own Rot The Conservatives Are Breeding Floor Crossers

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

145.57

Word count

721

Sentence count

59

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In Ontario, math is being taught through social justice and identity-based lessons. But does this approach work? Is it actually working? And who's to blame for Ontario's dismal math scores? Well, the answer may surprise you.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Alright, this one is especially stupid, so brace yourselves. 0.99
00:00:03.600 So, you know how Ontario students have been struggling in math for years and years with 0.99
00:00:08.800 a series of low test scores coming in, coming in, piling up?
00:00:12.900 Yeah, that's still happening.
00:00:14.700 But why?
00:00:15.640 Well, this might be a little explainer.
00:00:17.760 Dozens of school boards across Ontario have decided the real problem is not math itself,
00:00:23.440 it's apparently social injustice.
00:00:25.420 Who knew that was the root cause?
00:00:27.740 Who knew that was the reason on why everyone is so bad at math?
00:00:31.700 Now, for example, in the Simcoe County School District, teacher training materials show math being taught through something called Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy, or CRRP.
00:00:42.380 By the way, credit goes to Juno News, who reported on this after getting a hold of the documents.
00:00:48.860 Anyways, what is CRRP?
00:00:50.420 Well, different school boards have different versions of this approach, where essentially math class is not just about math anymore.
00:00:59.000 You see, lessons are built around race, identity, and social issues.
00:01:03.580 So, for example, instead of focusing on the basics, a stats lesson might ask students to analyze racial disparities and talk about equity rather than just learning about, I don't know, how to calculate averages or percentages.
00:01:19.160 because, hey, who needs that in a stats class?
00:01:22.920 So the entire argument behind this is that math is somehow tied to race.
00:01:27.980 The training even claims some students experience math trauma
00:01:32.100 and that tying math to identity makes learning more effective.
00:01:37.060 They also say students learn differently based on who they are.
00:01:41.800 So white middle class students are described as having advantages.
00:01:45.860 Others are said to face systemic barriers.
00:01:49.160 So, if students are struggling, the explanation is not bad teachers or weak instructions.
00:01:57.120 It is that the foundations of the system itself is somehow built on racism.
00:02:03.180 And once you accept this idea in your head, the solution becomes very apparent.
00:02:08.300 Change math class so it is about more than math.
00:02:12.140 The materials even include examples.
00:02:14.200 In one lesson tied to math and data interpretation, students are asked to examine health statistics through a social justice lens.
00:02:25.120 Differences in cataract rates between racial groups are presented as evidence of racism.
00:02:31.920 And from there, the lesson moves into concepts like equity, privilege, and systemic discrimination.
00:02:38.740 But does this new teaching method around race even work?
00:02:43.560 No, it doesn't. And I am so shocked. Who could have guessed that? Who could have seen that one
00:02:49.300 coming? Data from boards like Peel and Waterloo shows that students from different racial
00:02:55.980 backgrounds perform about the same in math. And in some cases, minority students actually do a
00:03:02.440 whole lot better. So math results are not tied to race. And after years of de-streaming math,
00:03:09.260 dumping millions of taxpayer dollars into it and rolling out these teaching methods across the
00:03:15.180 entire province, the numbers barely changed. Before all of this, 61% of grade 3 students
00:03:22.660 met the standard. Grade 6 was around 50%. Grade 9 applied math was even worse. And after all these
00:03:30.920 reforms, what happened? Grade 3 is at 64%. Grade 6 is basically the same. Grade 9 is just slightly
00:03:38.840 better. And there is still no evidence for race correlation. And wait a second, who started this?
00:03:45.740 When did this start? The provincial government of Ontario is directly responsible. The Ministry
00:03:51.600 of Education has been pushing this approach since 2017, and by 2020, it was baked into the math
00:03:59.240 curriculum. Even the Ontario Human Rights Commission raised concerns a few years ago,
00:04:04.860 warning that these kinds of teaching methods were linked to falling literacy scores and calling for
00:04:12.280 a return to evidence-based teaching. But here we are. Social justice lessons are still showing up
00:04:19.420 in math classes, and kids are still falling behind. It is more clear than ever that Ontario
00:04:25.900 classrooms do not need less math. In fact, they need more math, better math, taught clearly and
00:04:31.720 directly. Because when ideology takes priority over the fundamentals, we all pay for it. By far,
00:04:38.400 human beings are the most valuable resource to the planet. And when we do not properly invest
00:04:44.240 in ourselves, the consequences are especially detrimental. It severely affects everyone and
00:04:50.100 everything. I cannot believe I am saying this in the year of 2026, but let's bring math back
00:04:56.340 into the classrooms.