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Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers
In this unique collection, more than 30 articles show how to weave social justice issues throughout the mathematics curriculum, as well as how to integrate mathematics into other curricular areas. Rethinking Mathematics offers teaching ideas, lesson plans, and reflections by practitioners and mathematics educators. This is real-world math-math that helps students analyze problems as they gain essential academic skills. This book offers hope and guidance for teachers to enliven and strengthen their math teaching. It will deepen students' understanding of society and help prepare them to be critical, active participants in a democracy. Blending theory and practice, this is the only resource of its kind.
180 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2005
10 people are currently reading
231 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 7, 2009
I read this book because I wanted some ideas for the sample teaching lesson for my New York City Teaching Fellows interview. It wasn't that helpful for that purpose as most of the example lessons involve multi-class-period, or multi-week lessons/projects that couldn't be condensed into 5 minutes, but it was still pretty enlightening to see all the ideas that educators were coming up with to infuse their lessons with social justice concepts (and often, ones that were acutely relevant to students' lives).
The good:
* Pretty damn empowering, especially the story of students calculating the space to student ration between their school and a school in the same district with a significantly different student body in terms of race and economic background.
* Lots of lesson plans, handouts, and things that could be used to recreate lessons in one's own classroom.
* Articles from a lot of different perspectives. I thought the one that was written by a teacher who taught in an affluent prep school was great. It reminds us that social justice (and an education grounded in social justice) isn't just the concern of poor people, or people of color, or anyone identified or identifying as oppressed. Its everyone's concern.
* I always thought Math was fun, but it wasn't engaging or culturally relevant in the way that history could be. This book argues, and provides examples, for teaching across the curriculum and making lessons that aren't exclusively about numbers, history, or civics.
What I missed:
* A ton of the ideas for lessons were examples of applications of skills already learned. I would have liked to see ideas about how to teach more fundamental math skills. I think the Algebra Project (which has its own article in the book) does a good job of this, though, afaik the social justice component of their work comes more from organizing around education access than the pedagogy.
* A lot of the examples involved statistical analysis which is important and hugely relevant for both math and cultural literacy. Still, I would have liked to have seen more algebra, calculus, or even arithmetic-based ideas.
* I haven't spent much time in a primary or secondary school math classroom, but from what I've heard, kids' skills can vary widely. I didn't read much about how this was addressed in the lessons. Many of them struck me as requiring a fair amount of math proficiency coming into the projects or applications.
The good:
* Pretty damn empowering, especially the story of students calculating the space to student ration between their school and a school in the same district with a significantly different student body in terms of race and economic background.
* Lots of lesson plans, handouts, and things that could be used to recreate lessons in one's own classroom.
* Articles from a lot of different perspectives. I thought the one that was written by a teacher who taught in an affluent prep school was great. It reminds us that social justice (and an education grounded in social justice) isn't just the concern of poor people, or people of color, or anyone identified or identifying as oppressed. Its everyone's concern.
* I always thought Math was fun, but it wasn't engaging or culturally relevant in the way that history could be. This book argues, and provides examples, for teaching across the curriculum and making lessons that aren't exclusively about numbers, history, or civics.
What I missed:
* A ton of the ideas for lessons were examples of applications of skills already learned. I would have liked to see ideas about how to teach more fundamental math skills. I think the Algebra Project (which has its own article in the book) does a good job of this, though, afaik the social justice component of their work comes more from organizing around education access than the pedagogy.
* A lot of the examples involved statistical analysis which is important and hugely relevant for both math and cultural literacy. Still, I would have liked to have seen more algebra, calculus, or even arithmetic-based ideas.
* I haven't spent much time in a primary or secondary school math classroom, but from what I've heard, kids' skills can vary widely. I didn't read much about how this was addressed in the lessons. Many of them struck me as requiring a fair amount of math proficiency coming into the projects or applications.
Want to read
June 27, 2008this book was just recommended to me by a middle school math teacher who weaves social justice issues into her curriculum. sounds great!
June 18, 2015
Nothing more than left wing propaganda attempting to brainwash our children instead of teaching them math. What a disgrace!
May 5, 2021
Read this with some SPU professors and members of my graduating cohort for book club. Really interesting and important read as an educator, especially one who teaches math! Some really cool lesson plans, conversations, and other classroom ideas, but it got a little monotonous/repetitive after a while.
November 30, 2020
Really insightful read which looks at incorporating social justice with numeracy and mathematics learning.
June 18, 2017
Very useful and inspiring book. As our school creates our curriculum this resource will become well worn. Since it is a Math book, I do wish it was categorized by mathematical topics, however.
September 25, 2018
Very important book but I wish it had more resources I could use directly in my classroom. I also wish it had more resources for upper grades.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews