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  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!)
The information you taught was not fabricated so it could not make children resent one another. This is reality of the world we live in and I believe that students should not be sheltered from the truth. As someone else said, one great way of increasing learning in the classroom is to make the lessons relevant and in this case you definitely did, enough so that the students wanted to talk to their parents about the scenario. I would write a letter to the parents letting them know that students learn better when the content they are learning is relevant to them, tell them that none of the data presented was fiction, and real-life scenarios are extremely useful in the classroom. If letters continue, then I would set up a meeting for all parents who want to discuss the issue, the school counselor, and the principal/assistant principal. Maybe hearing a view different view points will help to ease the issue.