I’d question if it actually is ‘relevant’.

It’s relevant, but is it really math?

Math teachers are asking students to analyze social-justice issues to make math relevant and compelling, reports Catherine Gewertz in Education Week. “Teachers are drawing on high-profile issues such as policing patterns, the spread of the pandemic, and campaign finance to explore math concepts from place value to proportionality and algebraic functions.”

In a social-justice math lesson, students may be asked to analyze data on the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

A new book with equity-based lessons for high school math teachers has become a bestseller.

Some districts are looking at teaching math through a “social-justice lens,” writes Gewertz. “The Seattle school district developed a framework last year that weaves questions of power and oppression into math instruction, along with explorations of ethnic identity, but it hasn’t been adopted.”

Detractors called the Seattle plan “woke math.” It wasn’t a compliment.

Trying to make math relevant to students isn’t new. But, in the past, teachers often focused on how to manage a budget or plan a business.

Now, teachers are tackling controversial issues, writes Gewertz.

At New Los Angeles Charter School, middle school math coach Mikel Edillon created a map of police shootings for a lesson on proportionality and graphing.

. . . San Antonio teacher Dashiell Young-Saver rewrote his Advanced Placement statistics course because his students always complained that they didn’t see the point of probability exercises like calculating the chances of getting a red or a green M&M. They asked to study police use of force, so he used data from New York City police stops in a “socially relevant” approach to statistics. Young-Saver created a website, Skew the Script, to host lessons that use topics like wealth inequality and immigration to explore statistics concepts.

Not surprisingly, some worry about political bias, while others think too much focus on social issues will mean too little focus on math.

Not every math topic is a good fit for social-justice teaching, concluded Andrew Brantlinger, an associate professor of math education at the University of Maryland, after trying it with remedial geometry students in Chicago. In a 2013 paper, Brantlinger concluded that linking math to social issues didn’t help students learn, writes Gewertz.

He warned of creating a two-tiered system with students of color learning “real-world math” and advantaged students learning college-prep math.