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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!)
I do not see anything wrong with your graphing lesson. Using real world facts always catches the students attention. It is obvious that the students learned something and thought the lesson was interesting since they went home and talked to their parents about what they had learned. I teach 7th grade English Language Arts and when I give my students a writing topic that relates to the real world and has real world data they LOVE IT! In my opinion, there needs to be a letter written to the parents explaining how the information was presented to the students and how they used it to learn the standards. Also, I would include how interested the students are when they are able to use real world information. It would be crazy for the teacher to remove the content from their lessons. When we as teachers see positive results why in the world would be even consider making changes!