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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 think that this is a great lesson to teach kids. I too have recently had a same issue in my English Language Arts class that I haven't incorporated into the class yet, but it has the same issues. My students have very low reading lexiles and the power point sent to me from the Read 180 coach showed what lexile levels are required for each job areas. The higher lexiles were successful teacher and doctors, then the lower they got, the lower income the jobs were such as sales clerk. I too am confused and unsure about how to present this information. However, I think if approached in the right way, with factual data based information then you are only teaching the truth. I would send home your facts with data to support your claims. I was in New Jersey recently and an advertisement came on for a new Pennsylvania Governor and she was using the lower income average for women as her platform for TV ad. I would use that to support my claims. I think you can either put this into your lessons and do the required work to appease parents, or take the easy way out. I recommend doing the hard work.