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!) I foresee situations like this happening to me in my near future, but I am going to have to cling to the research and push forward. The way that you are integrating real world scenarios/statistics into your math class is absolutely perfect. Embedding multicultural education into our everyday teaching is a great way to inform our students about the situations that are actually occurring it the world around it. Until awareness is brought to it, nothing will ever change. Students need to know the truth because they still have the power to make big changes in this world. I think it would be a great idea for you to include a "Getting to Know Me" paper in your "Welcome Packet" for now in the future, and use this as a way to share your thoughts and feelings about the importance of multicultural education in your daily instruction. I don't think it would be a bad idea to actually share some statistics in this paper either. Many parents might not even know the hard core truth, and if they did they may be more in your corner and support your teaching methods.