These days, if you were to draw one of Kamala Harris’s beloved Venn diagrams with one circle for “California” and another for “Reality,” there would be no overlap. The once and former Golden State has surrendered its state government to third-raters and its education system to the terminally woke. Now, just to put the icing on that lunatic cake, they have implemented new math standards.

Marxist math standards. Yes, you read that right.

California has approved new radical K-12 math standards that are openly a vehicle for Marxist ideology.  The stated goal is equity in math learning for non-whites and those from low-income families.  The framework notes that “black, latinx, indigenous, women and poor students” have been underrepresented in the curriculum throughout history.” Equity will be implemented in the curriculum by dumbing down and sugar-coating the lessons and infusing them with political issues and student organizing.

Tom Loveless, education researcher and former Brookings Institute fellow, predicted that the new framework “would place Golden State 6th graders years behind the rest of the world—and could eventually skew education in the rest of the U.S., too.”

There are some tidbits of what these new standards include, and they are just as risible as one would think, with babble like “explanatory text,” “examine(ing) inequities,” and “math identity rainbows.” Nothing that would be of any practical use, of course, and since mathematics is at the heart of, well, almost everything in our modern world, from the military to economics to engineering to business, this will eliminate any chance these poor young people have to get anywhere in life – unless they are pursuing one of the various Underwater Ethnic Dog-Polishing Studies degrees that seem to be sprouting from our academic institutions like cow parsnips.

Then again, we need baristas and table bussers (I’m pretty sure “busboy” is sexist, or something) in our society, too.

Lessons are to connect math and “environmental and social justice” with students tasked to write an “opinion piece” or an “explanatory text.” The framework notes that math lessons should empower students with tools “to examine inequities.”

The Marxist tenet of “oppressor” and “oppressed” is addressed in the framework: “Teachers can begin with awareness that mathematics play a role in the power structures and privileges that exist within our society and can support action and positive change.”

Students are to express their emotions and feelings in the “trauma-informed pedagogy” that will serve “as part of mathematics sense-making.” The issue of “inclusion” is addressed by students weaving together six colored cords – “math identity rainbows” – to show classroom community spirit. Vague “big ideas,” such as relationships, reign supreme over the normal course progression of arithmetic, Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II, trigonometry, pre-calculus, and so on. There will be less math facts memorization and standard algorithms, such as long division, will be downgraded. Student self-discovery will replace explicit direct instruction.

This is the purest corral litter, suitable only for enriching lawns or fertilizing crop fields.

It is difficult to over-emphasize how important mathematics – real mathematics, not this horse squeeze – is to keeping our society functioning. California’s education Politburo is on their way to ensuring that their society doesn’t function – that their students are reduced to drones parroting whatever the latest woke nonsense is. It’s baffling that this is continuing.

Maybe Kurt Schlichter’s Kelly Turnbull novels are turning out to be prophetic.

Here’s the silver lining behind this big, stupid cloud: School choice is gaining ground around the country, no doubt because of this kind of lunacy in government schools. It would be preferable to see all government involvement in schooling disappear, but that’s one of those things that would be nice but probably won’t happen; but school choice is something we can have, should advocate for, and who knows, may even come to someplace as loony as the former-Golden State.

The purpose of any educational institution is simple: to produce young adults with marketable skills. In this adoption of absolutely laughable Marxist propaganda masquerading as mathematics, California is failing its young people. It can’t continue, although sadly, it probably will last long enough to destroy another generation or two. But eventually, the bubble has to pop. As Herb Stein pointed out, what can’t continue, won’t continue. This kind of stupidity in the California school system can’t continue forever, and sooner or later, will come apart.