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 think that this is a very engaging lesson for the students, and that they were interested enough to go tell their parents about it, say something. I would explain to the parents that this was mealy an exercise to engage the students with real world number so that they could see that what they learn in class has real world applications. Should any of the students try to act in a manner that is inappropriate because of this activity or for any other reason, I will talk to the students about how such behavior will not be tolerated inn my classroom or this school and further behaviors such as this will result in disciplinary action. The intent of the activity was to practice their skills with relevant and meaningful data and formally apologize if this distressed any of the parents. I would then encourage them to keep in touch with me and to let me know if they have any other concerns or questions.