Mathematics Education Conferences Have Become Infomercials For The Hustle Culture
One of the largest state math conferences, CAMT in Texas, is ending today. The first test to see if the title of this blog is provocative hot air is to go to all the social media feeds of CAMT — X(Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Scroll through every single post/#CAMT2025.
It’s nearly 100% commercial. From thanking sponsors who pay thousands to get Exhibitor space to edu-celebrities/wannabe edu-celebrities hustling themselves and their books/services.
Doing the math, that means there is almost 0% emphasis on mathematics. Who has time do that? Well, definitely not in a deep, meaningful way that mines the historic emotions of actually doing mathematics.
Doubt? Are you kidding me? In the hustle culture of mathematics education, it’s about scaling/marketing anything BUT that!
Everything needs to be codified. Every move needs calculation. Everything in mathematics education has to be sold as the next silver bullet — which usually comes, and not ironically, with very little emphasis on mathematics.
The attendance at math conferences has been plummeting the last decade. The energy in the Exhibitor’s area — which used to be a locus of infectious social connection — has dwindled down to something like the circus left town. This is just a symptom of the job cuts in ed tech.
And, sadly, all these companies are fighting over the same, small piece of inconsequential real estate — tool dependent solutions focussing on how to teach mathematics.
Adding the digital fatigue to the commercial fatigue of constantly selling your product — with any report that cites an uptick of meaningless/transient data — only accelerates the race of all concerned.
It’s not a race to the top. It’s the race to the bottom. Who ever “wins” will have prostituted themselves the best to convince teachers/districts that this year’s elixir to improve mathematics education is them.
Until companies and educators actually listen to students — your supposed “customers” in this hustle — you’re not only selling empty promises, enabling a broken system.
The following is an excerpt from my daughter’s reflection of school math.
He brought back the curiosity and intuitiveness school math took away from me. He never made me feel small for not understanding. Instead, he made the mystery feel big enough for both of us to understand.
Raya Singh
The death spiral of math conferences has begun. Because math education, at bottom, was always a commercial and corporate endeavour, it had no exit strategy if the economic and philosophical realities became frictional forces.
It had to continue to sell the illusion — hoping that the “Dorothys” never pull back the green curtain on that.
In some ways, it’s all a Ponzi scheme. The mostly white edu-celebrities keep getting richer while the students of colour — whose teachers can’t afford to go to math conferences — continue to get an impoverished mathematics education.
That delta between the haves and have nots is the direct result of unchecked commercialization and corporate dominance in mathematics education.
Those who have drank the Building Thinking Classrooms and other scalable nonsense kool-aid are, at the very least, enablers of all of this.
Years ago, we used to be concerned about the centring of “Whiteness” in mathematics education. Now, we don’t care. Anything which bring in money and attendance at these educational flea markets is to be lauded — and, with little energy to find the irony, centred.
Human flourishing. Dead.
Mathematical Storytelling/History. Dead.
Doing/sharing mathematics. Dead.
All killed by a institutional echo chambers masquerading as having interest in mathematics, but truly only interested in selling mathematics as a superficial brand.
Calling it anything less than an academic grift of privilege and entitlement would be a lie.
The victims are mathematics and students — both of have shortchanged and used in selling the bullshit.
