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 explaining your methods and reasoning to the parents is very important, and I am glad you have the support of the principal. Maybe once you explain why you are using this type of information, you could ask parents for some suggestions on how to do this. Remind them that the students did not seem to be getting into fights or developing hatred, but were learning valuable lessons about society. It may be a good idea to make sure that the information you are using in math can be tied in to the social studies lesson. This way, if the class gets off topic during math, you can redirect them while promising the opportunity to continue the discussion later. I think this was a good idea to show connections across disciplines and to show the usefulness of math.