Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Math and Social Justice! No No! Recently, I read a report in a national magazine on income levels of different groups of people in the US. The report especially featured income differences between males, females and different ethnic groups. Some of the statistics were very disturbing. For example, women holding the same job as men with same number of years in the job made considerably less money in most of the states. Differences between ethnic groups were even more disturbing. I decided to use these data in my math class with my 5th graders in a lesson on graphing. The purpose was for the students to be able to interpret graphs and create graphs using the information provided. Students enjoyed the lesson and learned some social justice lessons. Apparently a lot of my students talked to their parents about what they had learned in class when they went home. I received notes from about 10 parents the next day simply indicating that what I taught in my math class would lead to hatred among my students and that I should not be wasting their children's valuable time. Rather, they suggested, I should teach math with no controversial materials. I completely disagree with them and I plan to use similar materials in my other courses as well. However, my principals asked me to send an explanation to those parents. I know my explanation will not stop the complaints. How should I go about this potentially long battle? Or should I take the short cut simply remove such content from my lessons? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) There are some battles that are worth fighting until the end. There are some places where you choose to make a stand no matter the cost to you and your personal comfort. The only person that can answer the question on this issues is you. Is this a battle where you choose to make a stand? If this is a place where you are willing to fight the fight, then I would do some preplanning on how to present the content to both students and parents. As far as the parents go, I would probably send a newsletter home with the students, post it on my website or send it out on remind.com. The newsletter needs to include research based information in the most clinical and non-biased terms possible. Parents need to be warned that this conversation is coming. Parents also need to know how you are going to approach the matter to ensure that hate is not birthed and/or propagated. I would also have a conversation about this with my direct administrator and/or principal to gauge support. There are some battles that you don't want to fight without reinforcements. Ultimately, it comes down to whether you are willing to fight this fight for this particular issue.