If you’d like to watch the video, you gotta go to them. Thanks to the 800+ of you who attended and the other 3000+ of you who’ve watched it afterward. I’m so deeply appreciative. Some thoughts about this work.
Last year, I set to elevate a conversation about belonging within the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. For almost a decade, I felt like NCTM didn’t belong to me, but to other people who saw themselves as mathematicians in classrooms. I also recognize that education has sought to center the equity conversation more intentionally lately, even if the conversation only swims on the shallow end of the pool. At some point, I also sought to change the math conversation from “How can we make sure kids learn math” to “How can we include more ways of knowing math?” That explicitly asks us to push past exclusive narratives of what a good math student looks like, but also includes narratives of what a good math teacher looks like.
Sometimes, people adhere to the stereotypes because it comforts their own identity and allows them to enforce the gates.
After last year’s keynote, I had some good conversations, specifically with Dr. Imani Goffney about math and this work. I won’t go in-depth into our conversation, but when I endeavored on proposing this workshop, I wanted folks to get a few lessons that would last them for their careers:
- Historically, math isn’t neutral.
- Social justice in math doesn’t just mean “create a group project.” It’s also understood in the pedagogy.
- Students won’t ever trust you with their minds if they can’t also trust you with their persons. Building relationships is part and parcel of equity work.
I didn’t give enough attention to the first one, but here’s this: the history of the world is rife with stolen knowledge, stolen people, and stolen lands. I instantly had to state my position in the context of mathematics education in this country. When Haiti sought its liberation in 1804, France subjected them to a “reparations” that still endures to this day, under the thumb of financial oppression for centuries after. When the Dominican Republic sought its independence on a number of occasions, they knelt to the colonial wishes of Spain and the United States as well, then under dictatorial rule and political chaos for decades upon inglorious decades. In United States of America, white male landowners created visions of freedom from the English with boisterous language and assistance from France only to create tiers of inhumanity for everyone else on the lands they believed were theirs.
The stories the dominant culture teaches about “others” is also the knowledge we rarely interrogate. In so many instances, colonial rule sought to suppress humanity, which includes the right to learn.
Concurrent with the need for white male landowner independence was the need to pass anti-literacy laws. For many of us, the right to learn meant the right to resist and the right to make equal. It also meant the right to seek remuneration for centuries of enslavement and terrorizing conditions. It’s not enough to see current achievement gaps by race and say “Something must be done about it.” We must rectify the history that allowed educational suppression and theft to occur. We can’t do that by doubling down on mechanisms that are meant to exacerbate inequity. That includes teaching math as a rote set of tricks to help ace a test.
Too many Ivy League graduates-turned-politicians espouse and promote anti-intellectual movements in the hopes that people don’t catch onto the math. None of this is by accident.
In a country where it was illegal to read and write for numerous subjugated groups, it’s incumbent on all of us to understand the level of work it’ll take to make our groups whole. It’s not enough to put caricatures of children of color in a textbook. We have to intentionally train students to see themselves as burgeoning mathematicians, whether that’s their chosen profession or not. It’s not enough to hire more teachers of color. We also have to reconstruct the ideas we have about math from a subject that’s exclusive to a few to a subject of the inclusive.
But that’s for another time. Marian Dingle set the tone correctly by asking everyone to engage in their roots, not just the land they stand on, but the lands they’ve stood in. We owe so much of our energy to millions named and unnamed that came before us. Putting respect on that legacy was paramount, pandemic or not.
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