by Death Cab for Cutie
Math education in this country is disappointing at best, terrible at worst and in districts that serve primarily brown / black kids, it’s even worse. Racism and classism make it okay for this to happen and for millions of people to go about their daily lives like it doesn’t even matter. Well it fucking matters to me.
My calling has been revealed to me and it comes with some critiques:
1. Math education (along with literacy education) is among the most important tool for social justice. You can’t transform communities without understanding math, resource economics and statistics. You just can’t. Let me teach you
2. Student learning should be the standard measurement tool in education research. Why isn’t the only (yes the only) textbook PROVEN to increase student learning used in every single elementary math classroom in the country? Why don’t administrators care about making evidence based decisions?
3. It’s super great to study math pedagogy (as long as the measure of success is student learning) in middle and high school but it’s also too late. If math achievement can be correlated with elementary skills (and it can be) then we need to invest in math education in the primary grades.
4. Why is math education research so sparse? I’m gonna have to get a PhD in early math education. Who wants to accept me?
5. In a survey of elementary teachers it’s really not acceptable for several teachers to be sure that there’s no number between 1/6 and 1/7. I need my kids to be taught by someone who understand the principals of mathematics.
6. I’ve learned A TON reading some of the small amount of published work on the cognitive processes surrounding early mathematics education. I’m trying to figure out how to apply it, share it, measure its outcomes and you know, revolutionize student learning in early mathematics (oh and you know, write a really awesome song with an amazing beat about long division).