Bad at Math?: Dismantling Harmful Beliefs That Hinder Equitable Mathematics Education

by Lidia Gonzalez

Math really is for everyone―so let’s prove it. You’ve heard it from kids, from friends, and from celebrities: "I’m bad at math." It’s a line that society tends to accept without examination―after all, some people just aren’t "math people," right? Wrong. As we do with other essential skills, we need to expose the stereotypes, challenge the negative mindsets, and finally confront the systemic opportunity gaps in math education, and replace them with a new vision for what math is, who it’s for, and who can excel at it. In this book you’ll find Both social commentary and a toolkit of solutions, this bold new book directly challenges the constructs that have historically dictated our perceptions of what makes someone a "math person". Only by dismantling those misplaced assumptions can we reform math education so it works for everyone. Because in truth, we are all math people.

200 pages, Paperback

Published March 2, 2023

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really important book. It is a professional resource for math teachers, but it's accessible to any reader who cares about changing the harmful beliefs mentioned in the subtitle. It is positively immoral that our society continues to exclude enormous groups (e.g., women, people of color) from the study of math for no good reason.

As someone who has been flinging around the excuse "I'm bad at math" since I was in elementary school, I feel seen. But I also feel embarrassed, because I shut myself off from learning something that might not have been my favorite subject, but could have been useful to me. At least in my case, I was not being driven away from math because of the color of my skin or my gender.

If you have kids in school, you should at least skim this. If you are a math teacher, PLEASE read this and do whatever you can to be part of the positive change our schools so desperately need.