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!) Being a Social Studies teacher, I think this lesson is GREAT. By bringing in real numbers and data for the students to graph is an awesome way to show the students a current event/topic and learn math at the same time. If I was the Math teacher, I would have coorinated with the Social Studies teacher to where they could spend some time in class discussing the some topic that day. That way the students will get a more well-rounded view of the topic and it would give you a little more leverage when you are defending your lesson to the parents. I would for sure not take the easy road and just removed the lesson. I would fight for it, because in the end, the students enjoyed and learned from the lesson. We are educators to educate students about the content and create competent citizens. Stand up for what you believe in...