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Math that Matters

Thinking about math in connection with social justice issues is interesting, and not something I've done very much in the past. I feel very passionate about social justice issues, but I've always felt that these issues can more seamlessly be worked into an English classroom then a math classroom. In fact, that's one of the reasons I want to teach English - to have the chance to explore and interrogate important issues with the young people who will shape the future.

This article really made me think about how social justice issues could have a place in the math classroom as well. I was particularly struck by the stated goal of "helping people to have the cognitive skill to protect themselves from deception." However, I felt some of the social justice math projects described seemed a little trivial in places. It seems like a difficult task to design a project that really gets at the heart of a social justice issue, but also addresses the math curriculum, especially in later years as the math gets more complex. However, there are areas of the curriculum that could work well, such as analyzing data, looking at statistics, and developing financial literacy. So while these type of projects might not work all the time, there definitely seem to be areas where they would work wonderfully.

While I do think that math is inherently one of the most neutral disciplines in existence, math is used in many different ways - to promote and defend many different viewpoints and ideologies. It seems that the author of this textbook believes, and I agree, that investigating how numbers are used and manipulated can help students think more critically about the mathematics they see in the world around them, and the mathematics in their schoolwork.


Comments

  1. Susan Gerofsky27 November 2017 at 12:09

    It's interesting to be both a math and an English teacher, and to think about what is easier taught in one class than the other--even though we are the same teacher in both! Sometimes the 'neutrality' and abstraction of math is comforting in a way, and a chance to be away from the social problems of the world. Interesting post!

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