The Candice Malcolm Show - Making math teachers know basic math is racist, according to Ontario Court

00:00:00.000 Making math teachers pass a basic grade nine math test is racist, according to the Ontario

00:00:05.620 Divisional Court. This is judicial activism and the woke ideology at its worst. I'm Candice

00:00:10.940 Malcolm and this is the Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into

00:00:19.600 the Candice Malcolm Show. Welcome to the program. Today I want to talk about a decision that came

00:00:24.100 down over the Christmas break. We had already finished our recordings for the Christmas show,

00:00:28.380 so I wasn't able to cover it when it came out, but I want to talk about it today because it's one of

00:00:32.720 those decisions that is just so absurd and so frustrating and it just really shows how far

00:00:37.900 down the woke rabbit hole we as a country have gone. So of course I am talking about this decision

00:00:43.800 that came down from the Ontario Divisional Court. It found that forcing teachers, teachers who are

00:00:49.800 going to be teaching math to students in Ontario schools, asking them to pass a basic math exam

00:00:55.660 is racist. So we're going to get through all the details here. Now let's just go through some

00:01:00.120 background of what it is that I'm talking about. So the math proficiency test. Back in 2019, Doug Ford,

00:01:06.700 the premier of Ontario, and his education minister, Stephen Lecce, and so they were alarmed by the dismal

00:01:12.920 math scores in the province of Ontario. So this is coming from the hub. This is how they described it.

00:01:18.880 In 2019, alarmed by falling student math scores, the Ford government introduced legislation to require

00:01:24.440 teachers to pass a mathematics proficiency test, MPT. It is emphatically not a difficult test. It

00:01:30.940 consists of 75 multiple choice questions, assessing basic math skills taught in grades three to nine.

00:01:36.800 In other words, skills which any Ontario student is required to master to graduate, as well as

00:01:41.720 mathematics pedagogy. So the test was designed as a two hour test, but in this case for the teachers,

00:01:47.480 they were allowed to have three hours to complete it. Those who do not pass this test on the first

00:01:52.240 attempt are allowed unlimited numbers of retakes. Okay. So a score of 70%, which is a low B is

00:01:59.260 required in order to pass this test. Unsurprisingly, over 85% of all test takers were able to pass it.

00:02:07.100 So again, this was according to our friends over at the hub. So again, a basic test, the kind of math

00:02:12.500 that you would learn in grade three to grade nine. And so all of the Ontario government was asking was

00:02:18.680 that teachers learn basic math in case they are going to teach. It would be required for all teachers

00:02:24.160 who are teaching elementary school and in high school in Ontario, secondary school. And again,

00:02:29.640 this is perfectly reasonable because in Ontario, any teacher in the school could be required to teach

00:02:35.620 math. It's not like university where a professor is set with their sort of background and their

00:02:41.620 skills and they teach in their field. In high school in Ontario or in elementary school as well,

00:02:46.780 any teacher could be asked to sub in and to become a math teacher. So again, this is pretty basic stuff

00:02:53.120 here. We have an issue in Ontario where math scores are falling. Frankly, we have this issue all over

00:02:58.300 Canada where our math scores are not where they were. They're not as good as they were 10 years ago,

00:03:03.640 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And so the government wanted to address this situation. And it's also worth

00:03:09.300 noting that this is a common feature in many of our allied countries, many other countries that are

00:03:14.160 also trying to address the math standards. So the government of Ontario noted that these types of

00:03:19.820 proficiency tests are used in other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan,

00:03:24.880 all of which required a standard math test for educators. So it's not unreasonable to ask math

00:03:32.080 teachers to know math. It's not unreasonable to ask all teachers to have basic math proficiency when the

00:03:38.060 goal here and what we are trying to do is make sure that students have better outcomes, that students are

00:03:43.660 properly prepared for the world in front of them. And I mean, just think about the changing economy.

00:03:48.200 Just think about how prevalent the use of computers are, how high in demand skills are for anyone who

00:03:54.760 knows how to code, knows how to program anything involving computers. If we want to set students in

00:04:00.580 Canada and Ontario up for success in the world, they need to know math. And in order for them to know

00:04:05.440 math, the teachers who are teaching them need to know math. I mean, this is all just so obvious.

00:04:08.860 It's so ridiculous that it's hard to wrap your head around how we ended up with this position 0.91

00:04:14.880 where we have a court determining that this was racist. So again, just to address the declining 0.77

00:04:19.400 math scores in Canada, this is over in the CBC. It says, Ontario elementary students' math scores

00:04:26.480 declining. The Education Quality and Accountability Office, this was over in the CBC back in 2019.

00:04:32.140 Fewer than half of grade six students, 48%, met the provincial math standard during the previous school

00:04:38.480 year, down from 61% in 2009. So less than half of the students in grade six can pass a basic math

00:04:45.080 exam. For grade three students, it's 58% that met the standard. That's down from 70% back in 2009,

00:04:51.400 2010. The Education Quality and Accountability Office said that grade nine results are relatively

00:04:56.340 consistent, but there is a persistent gap between students in the applied and academic courses.

00:05:01.200 44% and 84% of them met the standard respectively. So again, not good, not good. We are

00:05:08.440 not doing what we should in terms of preparing students for the future, for their future,

00:05:14.700 for the future economy. This is over in the Fraser Institute. They did a report that showed that the

00:05:19.540 results between 2003 and 2018 show a steady decline in Canada's math scores, whereas Canada had the fifth

00:05:26.020 highest math score among 37 countries participating back in 2003. It occupied 12th place among 78 participating

00:05:32.440 jurisdictions in the most recent 2018 assessment, noting that Canada places 12th among the 78 countries

00:05:40.300 in math scores for a program called the Program for International Student Assessment. You can see in the

00:05:46.040 math there that Canada is now ranked 12th. So again, we have good intentions. We have the Ford government

00:05:51.880 assessing a problem saying we need to improve math skills. Here's one way that we can do it. We can make

00:05:56.140 sure that everyone who is teaching math is able to pass their own math test. Again, super, super reasonable.

00:06:03.320 Okay, so the province started administering these tests last May, and what we saw happen was that there were

00:06:09.520 disparities in terms of the success rate. So this is why it ended up in the court. This is why the teachers, this

00:06:15.720 was the justification anyway. The teachers unions didn't like it. They didn't like more, a higher burden on their

00:06:20.780 own teachers. And so they fought against this. And this was the evidence that they used as to why

00:06:25.060 taking these tests was wrong. And this is what the court heard. The court heard that there were

00:06:29.560 demographic disparities in the success rates. Canadians who identify as indigenous and black

00:06:34.680 had a success rate 20% lower than white candidates. And there was also a disparity between

00:06:39.920 French-speaking and English-speaking test takers. So it said that the francophone candidates had a lower

00:06:45.600 success rate than anglophone test takers. Of the non-white candidates writing the test in French,

00:06:50.000 55% were successful compared to 84% of the white candidates writing in French, the court heard.

00:06:56.140 Those whose first language was neither French nor English had a lower success rate, an even lower

00:07:00.980 success rate. Okay, so because, basically this is a problem, this is where we are in Canada,

00:07:06.240 where every single thing, every single policy, every single initiative, every single law,

00:07:11.640 instead of just looking at whether this is a good law, whether it makes sense, whether it will help,

00:07:15.940 everything is looked at through the lens of race. We are in this moment where

00:07:19.980 we are all obsessed with race. The country is obsessed with race. Divisive identity politics

00:07:24.040 has seeped into every aspect of our society. And because of that, we can't just look at a policy

00:07:29.060 and say, hey, this is great. Let's all work together to try to improve mass scores, to try to make sure

00:07:33.720 that Canada stays competitive and that these students have a fighting chance in the economy

00:07:37.500 in the future. Instead, it all goes back to race. It all goes back to division. It all goes back to

00:07:41.920 identity politics. And here we see how they've broken it apart and assessed how there are different

00:07:47.680 outcomes. There are different outcomes for different people. And therefore, it doesn't matter what the

00:07:51.580 intentions are. It doesn't matter what the outcomes are. It doesn't matter how good this initiative is

00:07:55.420 for students in the province of Ontario and how good it can be for our future economy. All that matters

00:08:01.120 is that we have identified this one area where we can reasonably say that this is a racist law and

00:08:07.560 therefore the entire thing should be shut out. So the unions fought against it. They got it to court.

00:08:12.400 And here we have Ontario court declares that the math proficiency test is unconstitutional because

00:08:19.080 it is racist. So the MPT, the math proficiency test has been declared unconstitutional on December 17th,

00:08:26.380 2021 by an Ontario divisional court due to concerns about it being racially biased. According to the

00:08:32.400 Ontario Teachers Federation, the court found that the test had an adverse impact on entry to the teaching

00:08:38.320 profession for racialized teacher candidates and other reasonable alternatives should have been

00:08:43.240 implemented. Racialized students benefit from being taught by racialized teachers, the court decision

00:08:48.020 stated. So basically what the court decision here found was that there was a disproportionate impact

00:08:54.040 on what they call a protected group. And so because of that, the entire rule, the entire law,

00:08:59.260 the entire initiative that the Ford government had to try to teach math teachers math gets thrown out,

00:09:03.940 gets thrown out. And so again, what we're seeing here is the woke ideology seeping into another

00:09:09.620 institution. So just like how the woke left, they changed the meaning of the term racism. Racism used

00:09:15.420 to have a very specific meaning. It used to, everyone knows what a racist was and being called a racist

00:09:20.860 was one of the worst insults that you could be called. But slowly over the last several years,

00:09:25.820 you have seen that they have changed the meaning of the term racism. It no longer means what it used to

00:09:30.640 mean. And now it just means any kind of power imbalance. And you have people on the left throwing

00:09:35.360 the word around, calling everyone and everything a racist. You're a racist and a bigot if you don't 0.98

00:09:40.360 adhere to the latest woke trend and the left ideology. If you're not completely adherent to these trends 0.93

00:09:46.820 and this ideology, they will call you a racist and they will call you a bigot. Well, it is similar with

00:09:51.360 these laws, with this woke ideology seeping into these institutions, the idea of disparate impact.

00:09:57.420 It's also called adverse impact, but it's judicial theory that was developed in the United States.

00:10:01.860 It allows challenges to employment and educational practices that are non-discriminatory on their face,

00:10:07.160 but have a disproportionately negative effect on members of a legally protected group. And so again,

00:10:13.680 this isn't about having equal treatment. This isn't about equality of opportunity. This isn't about

00:10:18.500 treating everybody in a society the same, which used to be the goal of the civil rights movement. It used to

00:10:24.060 be the idea behind the sort of crusaders towards living in this peaceful anti-racist society.

00:10:29.360 But that's no longer the goal. The goal is no longer quality of opportunity, quality of under the law,

00:10:34.800 that the new standard now, according to the woke left and according to this ideology,

00:10:39.240 is equality of outcome. The outcome has to be the same. Otherwise, the rule is racist, the law is racist.

00:10:45.500 So this in a nutshell is what we're seeing here. It's just like critical race theory that we're seeing

00:10:50.900 in school. It's the exact same trend. It's the exact same idea. It doesn't matter about your

00:10:54.880 intent. It doesn't matter about whether or not the rule or the law is discriminatory. All that

00:10:59.720 matters is the outcome. And again, I had Samuel say, who's a wonderful thinker on critical race theory

00:11:05.460 on my show a few times over Christmas, and he articulated this so well that the outcome that

00:11:11.280 they're looking for, quality of outcome, is Marxism. It's the exact same thing that the communists

00:11:15.480 used to fight for. They've now wrapped it up in this whole sort of anti-racist, critical race theory,

00:11:21.340 race-obsessed lens. But what they're fighting for and what they're looking for is exactly the same

00:11:26.100 thing as what the Marxists and the communists were fighting for. And this is where we are as a

00:11:32.080 society where race is just seeped into every aspect of our society. And so not surprisingly here,

00:11:38.100 folks, the teachers' unions are celebrating. We saw this over in the Ottawa Citizen. It says,

00:11:43.460 the headline here says, teachers' candidates win a huge victory over the province's mandatory math

00:11:49.200 test for educators. So not surprising here that teachers' unions are doing a victory lap and

00:11:54.540 celebrating because they don't want to learn math. They don't want to learn math. So they're

00:11:59.120 celebrating and they say it's a huge victory. So the OTF applauds the efforts of the Ontario

00:12:04.220 Teachers' Candidates Council for pursuing this successful legal challenge. There is no research to

00:12:10.100 suggest that a standardized test would improve student outcomes or enhance teachers' pedagogy.

00:12:15.600 Ontario has some of the best educated teachers in the world, and this decision reinforces their

00:12:20.360 professionalism, said the OTF president, Chris Cowley. So again, they are celebrating the fact that

00:12:25.380 they no longer have to show that they're competent at math. They're just stating that they have some of

00:12:29.920 the best educated teachers in the world. And look, I'm not doubting this. I'm not doubting that there are

00:12:34.460 some brilliant, dedicated, well-educated, wonderful, wonderful teachers in the Ontario public school

00:12:40.120 system. I'm just saying that on the surface here, looking at a teachers' union celebrating the fact

00:12:45.900 that teachers no longer have to pass a math test is just patently absurd. It truly shows where the

00:12:53.000 Ontario Teachers' Federation, where these unions focuses, because it's not on the students. It's not

00:12:57.960 on ensuring that students have better math scores. When you look at this, when you look at the way

00:13:02.600 they're celebrating this, what it shows is that they're happy that their lives are easier, that

00:13:07.400 they don't have to do this onerous test, and they've just found some trendy new justification

00:13:12.720 that a court in Ontario went along with. Not surprising here. There is quite a bit of criticism,

00:13:19.240 duly so, a lot of criticism on this decision. So Maxime Bernier coming out in strong terms,

00:13:25.420 calling this a decision by moronic woke judges. Bernier slams a decision to drop basic math tests 0.96

00:13:31.640 for new Ontario teachers to the People's Party of Canada leader, Maxime Bernier, did not mince words

00:13:36.340 after the Ontario Divisional Court ruled the province's math proficiency test for teachers

00:13:41.100 was unconstitutional. If you think courts will save us from crazy politicians, think again.

00:13:46.800 Moronic woke judges in Ontario rule that a basic math test for new teachers has to go because it

00:13:52.160 discriminates against racialized teacher candidates. Bernier tweeted on Friday, that is,

00:13:57.500 I couldn't have said it better myself. Writing in the National Post, Randall Denley also has some

00:14:03.480 strong words for this. He says that Ontario math test ruling is where we end up when race becomes more

00:14:08.880 important than competence. He writes that race trumps knowledge when it comes to training new teachers

00:14:13.700 an Ontario court has determined. It's a decision that defies common sense and places teachers' rights

00:14:19.000 ahead of students' needs. The Ontario math test decision is where we end up when race becomes more

00:14:24.720 important than demonstrated competence. Not only does it undermine merit, it's insulting to non-white 1.00

00:14:30.040 people. In effect, the judges are saying that racialized people, even those with a university

00:14:35.240 education, don't have the intellectual capacity to pass a math test. Some victory, he wrote. That is

00:14:41.560 really well put and an excellent point as well. This is really, really condescending to so-called

00:14:47.820 racialized teachers. Black and Indigenous teachers were told that they don't have the competence and the 0.97

00:14:52.340 capability to pass a math test. Look, if that's true, perhaps we have a different problem and we should 0.98

00:14:57.300 focus more on providing the aid and assistance to those types of teachers so that they are able to pass

00:15:03.060 math tests. Why don't we address the problem here? Instead, this is just like throw it out for everyone and

00:15:08.420 it's a big victory. Very good point by Randall Denley over in the National Post that this is incredibly

00:15:13.580 condescending and insulting to non-white people. Ezra Levant over at the Rebel had a pretty hilarious take as

00:15:20.500 well. This is from the Rebel website. He writes this about the court decision. He says,

00:15:24.960 it reads like it's from the Onion or the Babylon Bee or some other satire site, but this is real,

00:15:30.580 people. This isn't some woke student paper in some gender studies class in college. This is what

00:15:35.420 happens when woke students graduate, become woke lawyers, and then become woke judges. This is real.

00:15:41.180 It apparently is fine under the Charter of Rights to force people to take an injection or lose their job,

00:15:45.780 lose their ability to go on airplanes or trains or go to a restaurant. That's all fine by the

00:15:49.860 Charter. But making math teachers know math, that's discrimination. Ezra always has a very funny

00:15:55.140 way of putting these things. Excellent points there. So what's next? Will the Ontario government

00:15:59.800 challenge the court's decision? Well, the Ministry of Education referred a request for comment from the

00:16:05.260 newspaper, from the Ottawa Citizen, to the Office of the Attorney General. They're currently reviewing

00:16:09.700 the decision. So don't expect much from the Ford government here. I mean, the initiative was a good

00:16:15.060 idea, but what we've seen over and over again from the Ford government is just this total unwillingness

00:16:21.040 to fight against the teachers' unions. They cave over and over and over again. This divisive, race-obsessed,

00:16:27.160 woke ideology is seeping into every aspect of our lives. It continues to seep into every aspect of our

00:16:32.340 lives, and the woke left continues to push that. So rather than putting race at the front of every

00:16:37.740 conversation, as the left and as the woke crowd insist that we do, we should stop. Instead, we should focus on

00:16:44.700 the things that matter about a person, their character, their competency, their effort, and their

00:16:49.180 abilities. Making math teachers know math is not racist. It's common sense. It's about finding

00:16:55.180 competent, qualified people to teach the next generation of Canadians. The fact that teachers'

00:17:00.880 unions are celebrating this shows that they don't care about students. The judge who made this decision,

00:17:06.240 the three judges who made this decision, don't care about the students. They only care about their own

00:17:10.720 fashionable ideology and making teachers' lives easier. And as for the Ford government, when are

00:17:16.560 they going to stand up to the unions? This week, we also saw the Ford government cave to the teachers'

00:17:21.360 unions, who demanded that once again, schools be closed. So here we are in lockdown once again with

00:17:26.280 our kids staying at home. This despite the fact that COVID overwhelmingly does not harm children.

00:17:32.480 But what does harm children is making them stay at home. That has a severe effect on children. It will

00:17:38.640 continue to have an impact on this generation for their entire lives. Teachers' unions and their woke

00:17:44.520 allies in the Ford government and on the judicial bench are failing our children and failing our

00:17:49.700 country. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - January 05, 2022

Making math teachers know basic math is racist, according to Ontario Court

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