Math classes with a cause.

November 9, 2007 5:42 AM

Maths classes + radical left wing = Radical Maths
posted by jacalata (48 comments total)

Radical math is a resource for educators interested in teaching math. Social and economic justice isn't in your curriculum.
posted by Mblue at 5:52 AM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

That's pretty neat. Made me think of Lee Lorch.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 5:57 AM on November 9, 2007

My calculus teacher in highschool did this by teaching us calculus for 15 minutes, and then spending a half hour explaining why socialist policy is important in a democratic society. He was awesome.
posted by chunking express at 6:01 AM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Is this somehow related to Black Math(s)?
posted by kcds at 6:07 AM on November 9, 2007

Mathematician Lee Torch is known for activism, not math. Isn't that interesting?

He's also known for consensus from mathidiots. Let's discuss how math (and by proxy, chemistry/astronomy/ physics/a pitched baseball don't respond to activist numbers.
posted by Mblue at 6:08 AM on November 9, 2007

Huh. I clicked on that thinking that it was going to be about "new math," which is the abomination they were teaching in my high school when I went through. It was all based on the theory that it's easier for kids to pick up math if it's embedded in real-life situations: so instead of teaching fractions, you go through some long word problem about baking cookies, and if you need 1/3 cup of flour for one batch, how many do you need for two, etc.

All of which *sounds* really nice, and I'm sure the person who thought it up felt like it was a great way to make math more understandable to people who were intimidated by it, but seriously... it wasn't math. Math is confusing enough for most people without making it even murkier by never sitting down and explaining straight-out how the concepts work. Like those who criticize Jessica Seinfeld, I believe that even if math doesn't taste good, it does no one any favors to try to hide it in more palatable subjects. And I say that as someone who took the full load of social justice classes in college and loved every second of it. This is a serious, serious disservice to kids.

Ugh. Now that I think about it... it's even worse that if one math teacher in a high school got a reputation for teaching "radical math," the students most likely to be attracted to such a class are those that traditionally are most underrepresented as math majors and in grad school--girls and students of color. Which makes it even worse. Bah, I say!
posted by iminurmefi at 6:13 AM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Made me think a little of The Algebra Project, and Bob Moses' (not that one) quest to realize civil rights with math literacy.
posted by cal71 at 6:17 AM on November 9, 2007

This would probably give David Horowitz an aneurysm. One can only hope

I think application of mathematics to social policy by voters would be fantastic. So many voters, and many politicians approach policy from an innumerate perspective. Even if they might have learned math, they might not even imagine trying to apply it to the problem.

On the other hand, people taught how mathematics applies to social policy might be more apt to think about things reasonably.

Let's discuss how math (and by proxy, chemistry/astronomy/ physics/a pitched baseball don't respond to activist numbers

Well why don't you explain it, rather then simply asking smarter people to do it? Although I'm not sure how much stock I'd take in the words of someone who can't even balance parentheses.
posted by delmoi at 6:17 AM on November 9, 2007

I have hard enough time trying to get my college freshmen to add fractions properly and write complete sentences (and I'm teaching Calculus II right now).

This would just be a disaster.
posted by King Bee at 6:17 AM on November 9, 2007

He's also known for consensus from mathidiots
I don't know what this means. Perhaps you can draw me a Venn diagram or something.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 6:23 AM on November 9, 2007

My initial impulse was to groan, but the lesson plans I clicked on turned out to be pretty cool. I liked "The Mediator" a lot.
posted by stammer at 6:27 AM on November 9, 2007

Huh. I clicked on that thinking that it was going to be about "new math," which is the abomination they were teaching in my high school when I went through... so instead of teaching fractions...

Well, I'm sorry to tell you this but if you were still working on fractions in high school there isn't much hope for you either way.

I did plenty of "story" problems growing up and I never enjoyed it, and I never would have thought that they were supposed to make math fun. On the contrary, I always found them much more difficult then "regular" math problems. But that's the point they're hard because they actually teach you something. If you don't learn how to integrate math with 'everyday' situations you're not learning anything particularly useful.

One thing to think about, in the 1950s and 1960s when boomers were growing up, there were still tons of jobs for "computers" and any sort of technical job would require lots and lots of manual computation. These days, those jobs don't exist and no engineer would work without a calculator or a computer math program, so working with tons and tons of raw numbers isn't really going to be very helpful for anyone.

Arithmetic classes basically only serve two purposes today, teaching kids basic numeric for every day life (where the ability to estimate is more important then long devision) and preparation for higher math, where, again, long devision is not particularly useful.

I actually remember one of my high school math teachers (this was a calculus class, btw) complaining about a school board meeting where one of the board members actually said "I add and subtract fractions every day, but I can't remember the last time I used integers!" Well, of course you can't have fractions without integers, but that's beside the point.

Often times criticism of "new math" or "McMath" comes from people who are not mathematicians. One of my office workers was complaining about her elementary school daughter not learning "calculation" the other day. She's a secretary. It seems like people just want their kids to learn the way they learned. Like why would someone who barely understands math and never uses it on a daily basis know the best way to teach it?
posted by delmoi at 6:34 AM on November 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

delmoi

Math: 1 + 1 + 2
Now, 1 + 1, two positives equal the sum of both, 2.
1 times 1 is 1 single, which is one.
2 times 2 is a double, 4. This may be confusing, so 4 times 4 is 16, a square.

Now let's talk about how numbers work.

1111 is 4 with no sexuality, added to 11 whitch is 2 with no social standing, equals 6.

Exchange the social/political/ gender of the numbers. Does the total change?

Why not?
posted by Mblue at 6:51 AM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Good grief, what a travesty. Math is the one subject that doesn't have a political context, why bring politics into the math classroom? It's not as if kids are learning math so well these days that we need to add something else to it because the students have so much free time.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 6:55 AM on November 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

ridículo
posted by tadellin at 6:56 AM on November 9, 2007

It's not as if kids are learning math

Yep.
posted by Mblue at 7:01 AM on November 9, 2007

Can someone translate this into ebonics for me?
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 7:04 AM on November 9, 2007

A brief perusal of the site didn't answer one question: does it actually work?

The politics is silly, of course, but hard to take too much umbrage if it yields better outcomes, in terms of basic numeracy for the left-gifted and more high school kids taking calculus and declaring quantitative majors in college.

Another concern is that this kind of unconventional instruction would only ever be tolerated in schools where parents have low levels of education and/or engagement with instruction -- should their kids be the test subjects?

Also one has to wonder though whether the effort to contextualize and de-abstract math might actually turn off a kid with high potential for mathematics but without the parental or peer support that math precocity usually needs to take flower. Budding math geniuses aren't famous for their engagement in social issues or appetite for politics.
posted by MattD at 7:04 AM on November 9, 2007

"less gifted"!
posted by MattD at 7:05 AM on November 9, 2007

Actually, Ethereal Bligh, I think you are mistaken. Story problems almost always have some sort of political context. Often this context is not particularly overt, and since its usually reinforcing the status quo it often goes completely unnoticed by most people.

Take an example from my own childhood. For whatever reason my otherwise very advanced school was using math workbooks originally written back in the 1950's and 1960's. On one level this makes a certain kind of sense, after all, arithmetic doesn't change.

But the story problems were, interesting. Any story problem involving sports, construction, *always*, no exceptions, used male names and pronound. Any story problem involving cooking, cleaning, or babies, *always*, no exceptions, used female names and pronouns.

That, right there, is a political context.

I definately see something wrong with blatently and unnecessarially making math overtly political. But why not have story problems involving union involvement, figuring percentages of people who attend a political protest, etc?

"If there were 7,000 people at the war protest, and 4,500 of them were male, what percentage was female?"

"Joe and Brenda are trying to organize a union at the factory where they work. There are 57 workers, and it takes a majority vote to form a union. How many workers must vote "yes", if a union is formed?"

Etc.
posted by sotonohito at 7:08 AM on November 9, 2007

Wow, a lot of reactionary fervor in this thread.

If you actually click through the site, it doesn't seem that terrible to me. I mean, I like to see intellectual math content more than decorative nonsense more than anyone, but the links I'm looking at don't seem to be sacrificing anything.

For instance, just at random I chose the topic of Cartesian from Radical Math. The first link brought me here, which has examples and basic explanations of fractals. The examples happen to be from African villages rather than the usual tree or whatever. The evil part is....?

Another random topic, Percent Growth links to a page with percentage problems based on energy consumption. THE HORROR SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

Think of it as going from the Dick and Jane books of the 50s to books kids actually enjoy reading and/or are relevant to them. You obviously can't get a PhD in pure mathematics by browsing this site, but you couldn't do that even by browsing MathWorld. These are teacher resources for when they want a less boring/conventional/statusquoian motivator for their students.
posted by DU at 7:12 AM on November 9, 2007

What's next? Integrating theology into the biology curriculum?
posted by PlusDistance at 7:14 AM on November 9, 2007

the lesson plans seem to have some interesting stuff, surprisingly. the problem is that unless i actually know something about origami or polyrythms i'm not going to be able teach algebra using them very effectively, and frankly both origami and drumming i think are harder to do than algebra: that's why they are more interesting.

the thing about mathematics which is really nice is that it is all in your head, 1984 notwithstanding, 2 + 2 = 4 not because the teacher told you so but because as the logical consequence of freely agreed laws of numbers. the laws themselves are not commands but merely higher thoughts about what you want the concept of 'number' to mean. mathematics isn't possible without the freedom to think and I think that's one of the reasons why U.S. public schools do such a bad job of teaching it. when many students in my college classroom see symbols like "2+2 =" they react like victims of some horrible pavlovian experiment: they don't know what the master is asking them to do or why, but they know they will be rewarded for answering with the right symbol and punished for giving the wrong one.

the absolute freedom of thought is a truly radical idea and has nothing to do with accounting for social revolution...
posted by geos at 7:18 AM on November 9, 2007 [3 favorites]

You don't need radical math when you have the Mao of Pooh.
posted by b1tr0t at 7:21 AM on November 9, 2007

“Story problems almost always have some sort of political context.”

Yes, word problems can be political, but they oughtn't be. And they needn't be.

I'll be honest: I deeply dislike the idea of politically indoctrinating children in the classroom in any context. It's an abuse of pedagogical authority especially when you consider that most teachers aren't any better informed politically than anyone else.

But if politics has to be in the classroom, let's at least restrict it to those where it arguably has a place. Not in an indoctrinating sense, but in a “politics is deeply involved sense”. Pretty much every other subject qualifies for this, to some degree or another, even most sciences. But math? No, it's the one pristine subject that is simply pure reason. It doesn't need a political context to be studied and adding a political context creates much opportunity for confusion. When the children grow up and decide that they reject everything they were indoctrinated with, left or right, it would be an absurdity to see math distrusted as propagandistic.

Numerical “literacy” is, of course, extremely important in today's scientific/technocratic civil society—a great many political controversies involve a large portion of mathematical incompetence on all sides. So I certainly agree that some sort of rigorous quantitative approach to political issues would be a very important skill to teach in the classroom of a democracy. But I don't think it belongs in the math classroom.

And, sadly, don't hold your breath waiting for high school civics teachers to be competent at the relevant mathematics, much less deciding to integrate it into their curricula.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:21 AM on November 9, 2007

All counting is theft.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:22 AM on November 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

Yes, but does 0.9999999... still equal 1 in this, this... radical math?
posted by goatdog at 7:25 AM on November 9, 2007

¡VIVA LA DIVISION!
posted by darkripper at 7:26 AM on November 9, 2007

Adding new content to word problems is one thing, but when teachers start indoctrinating kids with their personal political beliefs, they cross the line.
posted by rocket88 at 7:30 AM on November 9, 2007

Good grief, what a travesty. Math is the one subject that doesn't have a political context, why bring politics into the math classroom?

One of the reasons why there is so much math and science in the curriculum is that someone decided we needed scientists to fight the "Red Menace (tm)." The history of science education in the U.S. in the last half of the 20th century is entirely entwined with the Cold War: the context is already political.

The task was not just to train scientists and engineers, but scientists and engineers who would work for the Dept of Energy or Lockheed-Martin. This is still largely true, in my opinion.
posted by geos at 7:30 AM on November 9, 2007

If you don't learn how to integrate math with 'everyday' situations you're not learning anything particularly useful.

I strongly agree.
posted by Slothrup at 7:34 AM on November 9, 2007

It's stupid, in the same way that "Christian Rock" misses the point and that Communist propoganda posters abused the graphic arts (to pick two extreme examples). Math is math. It's mostly devoid of social context. Embedding it in "relevence" is forcing it to be something it's not, and muddies the message a lesson should have.

Forex: 1 + 1 = 2 is much easier to show with a pair of blocks than to explain than two workers alone are solitary, but if they take collective action, and unite into a union of two, they can overthrow their boss and have a workplace of harmony that serves the needs of the people.

The message kind of gets lost in the noise there.

There's nothing wrong with picking socially relevant word problems, but math isn't just word problems, or even mostly word problems. Trying to give social meaning to abstract concepts is folly and just makes the lessons harder to understand.
posted by bonehead at 7:44 AM on November 9, 2007 [2 favorites]

Nothing math-related will ever be as radical as Pi.

Seriously.
posted by cog_nate at 7:46 AM on November 9, 2007

I sent this to my activist/math teacher wife... she'll love it...

She's actually been including political/social awareness stuff in her curriculum for a long time.. doesn't change the math, but makes it interesting and teaches at the same time.. She does the same with sports scores and college rivalries (Michigan DID beat MSU last weekend...she went nuts with that one!)

Thanks for the link...good find..
posted by HuronBob at 7:48 AM on November 9, 2007

Actually, Ethereal Bligh, I think you are mistaken. Story problems almost always have some sort of political context.

I agree. Think about it. Only poor people ride trains from NY to Chicago. How is the rich kid in the airplane supposed to know where the train coming from Chicago will pass the train coming from NY?
posted by inigo2 at 7:50 AM on November 9, 2007

when many students in my college classroom see symbols like "2+2 =" they react like victims of some horrible pavlovian experiment: they don't know what the master is asking them to do or why, but they know they will be rewarded for answering with the right symbol and punished for giving the wrong one.

This is extremely well-said and bears repeating. If we are to make an ideological point with our teaching of math, I think we ought to make the one which is a) not strongly identified with left or right politics, and which thus won't bring David Horowitz on our heads; and b) something which mathematicians and math teachers are especially well-positioned to teach. And that point is: there are lots of things in the world which you can figure out on your own, and which, once you figure them out, are correct, no matter what anyone else tells you. You want to build kids' intellectual self-esteem? That's how.

But it's not easy, especially in a room of 70 kids who you see just twice a week.
posted by escabeche at 7:53 AM on November 9, 2007

I'll be honest: I deeply dislike the idea of politically indoctrinating children in the classroom in any context.

Best not send your kids to school, then.

Not to play the old saw, but you can't be neutral on a moving train. As goes the economy, so goes the school system (and the news media, etc.) Schooling's purpose is to prepare kids for social existence. If that schooling isn't explicitly taking a position, then it's taking the position of the dominant society, and all its inherent, implied assumptions, by default.

If you're truly ok with how this whole experiment in Western civilization is going so far (and I'll have to ask you to show your work if that's the case), this shouldn't be a problem - but don't for one moment let yourself think schooling isn't inherently political.
posted by regicide is good for you at 8:34 AM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

My priority would be to get math education in this country on track, because right now it's a horrendous mess, with college students who don't know fractions, "everyday math" and its heavy emphasis on reading and language (so that if you can't read very well, now you'll be bad at math too). Will this new program help children learn more math? I don't think so. Maybe if we did a better job teaching math I'd be prepared to link it to other things, like social justice. Nah, maybe not. We teaching math here or social studies?
posted by cogneuro at 8:39 AM on November 9, 2007

Communist propoganda posters abused the graphic arts

Dude, communist propaganda invented the graphic arts.
posted by signal at 8:57 AM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

If you don't learn how to integrate math with 'everyday' situations you're not learning anything particularly useful.

That doesn't mean you teach math by using everyday situations. You acquire enough math so that you can apply it yourself.
posted by cogneuro at 9:56 AM on November 9, 2007

I think it's great. There have been a lot of claims that it interferes or displaces the learning of math fundimentals, but I haven't seen anybody back that up. Why shouldn't students learn how to use math to understand issues that effect their lives? It looks a lot of the schools that use these methods (like this one) have already embraced critical pedagogy, so it's not taht parents aren't seeking out this type of education.

This article (pdf) linked to from the Radical Math main page quotes the Manhattan Institutes's Sol Stern:

Social justice teaching is a frivolous waste of precious school hours, grievously harmful to poor children, who start out with a disadvantage. School is the only place where they are likely to obtain the academic knowledge that could make up for the educational deprivation they suffer in their homes. The last thing they need is a wild-eyed experiment in education through social action.

Because the last thing we want is disadvantaged kids starting to understand how exactly the system is keeping them down, and what they might do about it, right? Seriously, I can't wait for a generation of math-literate social activists.
posted by hydrophonic at 10:53 AM on November 9, 2007

From the advanced topics section:

Gaussian Distributions and the White Power Movement
Simple Interest: Pay Day Loans
Applied Differential Equations: Drug Uptake Kinetics
Economics In America: Irrational Numbers
Graphing in Action: Gerrymandering

I wish they taught this stuff when I was in high school.
posted by kscottz at 11:03 AM on November 9, 2007

This is awesome, what are you people whining about?

My 10th grade algebra teacher taught us probability by explaining how to win money at horse races. Of all the math teachers, he had the least amount of students sleeping through his classes.

I'm all for practice problems to develop math muscle, but why not have an array of contexts for the word problems? if social justice appeals to your student body, why not show how math, as an abstract tool, is related to (in)justice?
posted by eustatic at 12:21 PM on November 9, 2007

“If that schooling isn't explicitly taking a position, then it's taking the position of the dominant society, and all its inherent, implied assumptions, by default.”

No, that's not true. You can be critical without taking a position.

“If you're truly ok with how this whole experiment in Western civilization is going so far (and I'll have to ask you to show your work if that's the case), this shouldn't be a problem”

Also not true. I'm okay with Western civ, but I don't think education should indoctrinate kids with its values.

Believe me, I've thought about this question more than most and worked through it in more detail than most.

Yes, education is inherently political. That doesn't mean this should be accentuated, nor that it can't be countered, nor that pedagogically countering the status quo require an ideological and partisan oppositional stance.

Indoctrinating children in an ideology means that you do not trust them to think critically for themselves and, in fact, it disinclines them to think critically for themselves. It is also deeply hubristic and presumptuous, subverting what should be an intellectually liberating experience into the shackling of a conscripted army.

If the goal of education is to make good citizens—a goal I question—then here, especially, it is crucial to teach students how to think, not what to think. Indoctrinating them with positions and ideologies means that they will be very poor citizens, ripe for the plucking of any random ideologue who comes along with authority and rhetorical ability. Indeed, human beings have inherently a great need to be told what to think by their leaders, a need which is antithetical to democracy and which must be countered early and often in education if its goal is to produce good citizens.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:48 PM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised at how well these these problems were put together. I was all ready to make a lot of jokes about the sorts of people who show up at protests with great big papier mache puppets, but no, this is mostly real math.

Some quibbles, however:

"This study examined whether the likelihood of being sentenced to death is influenced by the degree to which a Black defendant is perceived to have a stereotypically Black appearance."

I don't have the time to read the entire thing, but I'm a bit put off by the implication here that it is the reaction to the physical appearance which makes black men more likely to receive the death penalty. I think the reality of this issue is a bit more complex than mere "racism on sight" - we're looking at a tightly bound mess of class and racial issues which don't lend themselves well to high school math.

"Nearly a dozen online software programs that help students learn standards-based mathematics as well as learn about different cultures and arts, including Latino percussion, graffiti, African-American cornrows, Navajo rug weaving, etc."

While I'm sure this is well-intentioned, it comes off as a little condescending. It feels like something from a Dangerous Minds deleted scene.

On the other hand:

"Explores the racial wealth divide that is so prevalant in our country, which isn't new, but was at least brought back into public discourse by Hurricane Katrina."

This sounds excellent. Again, no time to read the whole thing, but this is a rich, timely topic and there are many opportunities to use a variety of math skills in interesting ways. If I were in high school (ah, and if only), I'd love a unit like this.

...

I also worry that these units will instill too much faith in unions. Nothing against organized labor, but let's get real, at least about some unions. It could be fun, though, to begin by playing the side of union leaders, only to later on go into a problem where the union is corrupt.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:34 PM on November 9, 2007

Teachers unnecessarily politicizing the classroom, especially for purposes of propagandizing students, is horrid, but there does seem to be a tacit acceptance here that we need to keep academic subjects strictly segregated from one another. However, the most valuable learning experiences students can have are those that integrate and reinforce content/skills from several fields. They should be applying math in their other classes, from civics to gym to English -- for instance, you can practice working with decimals and percentages as kids analyze debatable issues and develop support for an argument. And they should be writing and listening to music and drawing (or making diagrams, etc.) in their "non-artsy" courses as well.

Unfortunately, the modern, compartmentalized school model doesn't lend itself to that sort of interdisciplinary learning; the one-room schoolhouse approach is much better.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:07 PM on November 9, 2007

Ditto what others have said about not using the classroom to preach. But these are left-wing fundamentalists, and in this they are no different from Pat Robertson -- theirs is the right way, and any deviation from this path must be rooted in hate or racism. Question authority, indeed.
posted by mattholomew at 6:31 PM on November 10, 2007

My priority would be to get math education in this country on track, because right now it's a horrendous mess, with college students who don't know fractions, "everyday math" and its heavy emphasis on reading and language

But why would college students need to know fractions? They probably don't know how to count in roman numerals either, and that would be just about as useful.
posted by delmoi at 10:00 PM on November 10, 2007