In Reply to: Wait till they hear about a terror cell called Al Gebra* posted by DSCBruin on November 24, 2025 at 13:29:30
On the first day of my Algebra class—back when it was still legal to teach algebra in community college—I used to explain the history of Hindu numerals, how they were adopted and developed by Arab mathematicians, and how they eventually made their way into Western Europe through Fibonacci. I also talked about the periods when these numerals were outlawed in parts of Europe.
I joked with my students that if we were adopting ISIS math today, Fox News would have a meltdown. But the simple truth is that people made more money using the “Arabic” system, so despite cultural and legal resistance, it was eventually embraced in Western Europe.
One day, after I told a Russian student she was welcome to use the Russian format for solving linear equations, a white female student went to my Dean to report that I was not teaching “American” math. I was called into a meeting with my chair and a director, along with the student, where I explained that math is math. It’s all the same.
She left the meeting in tears, perhaps because everyone present was completely unbothered by the idea that “American” math wasn’t being kept pure and untainted by supposedly foreign religions or cultures.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the so-called “American units” in my Prealgebra textbook—labeled that way to appease MAGA parents in Florida and Texas—are actually European imperial units.