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!) Students need to be able to make connection between mathematical content and situations outside of the textbook. Our current curriculum wants students to put forth their understanding towards real-world applications. Therefore, we have to help students make this connection by using scenarios that may sometimes be hard to use because of the background information. However, students need to be able to understand why math can be used to help make conclusions on whether situations are good or bad. Therefore, instead of just throwing the information out there, you should allow students to research information to use to create graphs and other math characteristics. If they research their own real-world information, then it is hard for parents to get mad. Another idea is when they are researching their own information, you can put guidelines on it but still have a little lead-way for them to look up their own interests.