Bill Gates has been spending money on education programming for years, allegedly supporting ideas like mathematics instruction is “white supremacy” and that kids are born sexual.
One curriculum Gates supported was “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” which was published by The Education Trust-West.
“We … wish to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their generous financial support of this project,” The Education Trust-West stated in its website’s acknowledgment section.
The purported goal of the curriculum is “to engage as many students as possible in not just solving math problems but understanding math concepts so they can apply them across a wide range of real-world applications,” the publisher claims.
One section of the curriculum called “Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction” describes what it means to be an “antiracist math educator” and offers “[e]xercises for educators to reflect on their own biases to transform their instructional practice.”
Some parents have taken issue with the curriculum and Gates’ financial support of it.
Nicole Neily of Parents Defending Education said in an interview with Fox News that Gates’ funding of “math equity” programs was “awful.”
“I mean, [the part where it says] showing your answer in math class is white supremacy culture. I have to take a step back and think — the people who are teaching this, is that what they’re teaching their own children? I have to think not,” she said.
While the curriculum does not explicitly say that asking students to show their work is “white supremacy culture,” the curriculum’s website does say: “… when we ask students to show their work, we should think about how and why. The point should be to have a dialogue about their process and their learning, not require every student to follow the exact same path to the right answer.”
“A child of immigrants might have learned a different way to solve a problem because that’s how their parents were taught where they grew up,” it reads.
The Gates Foundation also supports social and emotional learning (SEL), which is considered by some to be the process of developing and using social and emotional skills.
“People with strong social-emotional skills are better equipped to manage daily challenges, build positive relationships, and make informed decisions. SEL helps students and adults thrive in school and in life,” the advocacy group Understood argues.
The Gates Foundation provided $500,000 in November 2020 for the curriculum RULER — developed by Yale University — which purportedly dives into students’ emotions, personal relationships, beliefs, traumas, and psychological triggers.
One part of the curriculum focuses on teaching students that societal norms or rules do not need to be followed. The curriculum also encourages students to be enraged by “social justice issues” and instructs teachers to bring to the classroom images that are inflammatory and can create rage, Fox News reported.
The Gates Foundation has also awarded $80 million in funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which has an influence on global sex education policies. A 2017 IPPF toolkit trained educators to have an “[u]nderstanding of young people as sexual beings,” reported Fox News.
Relatedly, as previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas ISD faced some public backlash last year over its development of a resource guide that advised students on how to transition genders and which clinics to use as resources.
