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Dear Citizen Math: How Math Class Can Inspire a More Rational and Respectful Society
American democracy is at risk. Fueled by partisan news and emotion-stoking social media, Americans are becoming less and less able to think rationally about the challenges facing the country. For self-governance to succeed, citizens must analyze issues objectively, engage with one another respectfully, and ground their disagreements in reason and facts. At this precarious moment in our history, we need a renaissance in critical thinking.
It can start in the math classroom.
Composed as a letter to fellow educators, Dear Citizen Math offers an inspiring new vision for math as a forum for discussing the most important and interesting issues in society, from healthcare reform to global pandemics, fake discounts to the acceleration of technology. For generations students have viewed mathematics as a set of random skills to memorize and concepts with a little connection to reality. In fact, math is a powerful prism for exploring and making sense of the world, and math teachers can be the most influential people in American democracy. They have the potential to kindle a newfound commitment to reason and cultivate a more thoughtful citizenry.
About the Author Karim Ani is the founder of Citizen Math, where he develops instructional resources that help students use mathematics to think critically about the world around them. Before that, he was a middle school math teacher and instructional coach. Karim writes and speaks internationally about the role of math education in the 21st century, and was named by Education Week as one of the top young leaders transforming education in America.
Karim has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and a master’s degree in secondary math education from the University of Virginia. He is a volunteer EMT and avid photographer. When not traveling, Karim can be found under the hood of a late-1970s Toyota Land Cruiser. He tweets from @karimkai.
Praise for "Dear Citizen Math "A bold reimagining of math class. Ani's timely, thought-provoking ideas about the relationship between math and society make this an important read for anyone concerned about how to strengthen democracy through education."
Michael Driskill, Chief Operating Officer, Math for America
" Dear Citizen Math is brilliantly simple and profoundly transformative. It sensitizes us to what math instruction could be if we let it, and creates a clear-eyed roadmap towards a more purposeful experience of teaching and learning."
Anurupa Ganguly, Founder, Prisms of Reality
"A powerful argument for why math education must evolve if we're to successfully address the range of issues we face as a society. This clarion call is long overdue."
Steve Leinwand, Principal Researcher, American Institutes for Research
"The question of why we need math is answered clearly and powerfully. Dear Citizen Math is a call to action regarding our responsibility as math educators and an important read for teachers, parents and policymakers."
Bob Lochel, High School Math Teacher, Hatboro, PA
" Dear Citizen Math is a love letter to math educators and leaders. It's hopeful. It's thoughtful. It challenges all of us who care about math education to reconsider the status quo and reimagine what's possible in math class."
Sara VanDerWerf, K-12 Math Lead, Minneapolis (MN) Public Schools
"This brings me joy and reignites my purpose as a math educator."
Daniel Rocha, Middle School Vice-Principal, Cutler-Orosi (CA) JUSD
It can start in the math classroom.
Composed as a letter to fellow educators, Dear Citizen Math offers an inspiring new vision for math as a forum for discussing the most important and interesting issues in society, from healthcare reform to global pandemics, fake discounts to the acceleration of technology. For generations students have viewed mathematics as a set of random skills to memorize and concepts with a little connection to reality. In fact, math is a powerful prism for exploring and making sense of the world, and math teachers can be the most influential people in American democracy. They have the potential to kindle a newfound commitment to reason and cultivate a more thoughtful citizenry.
About the Author Karim Ani is the founder of Citizen Math, where he develops instructional resources that help students use mathematics to think critically about the world around them. Before that, he was a middle school math teacher and instructional coach. Karim writes and speaks internationally about the role of math education in the 21st century, and was named by Education Week as one of the top young leaders transforming education in America.
Karim has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and a master’s degree in secondary math education from the University of Virginia. He is a volunteer EMT and avid photographer. When not traveling, Karim can be found under the hood of a late-1970s Toyota Land Cruiser. He tweets from @karimkai.
Praise for "Dear Citizen Math "A bold reimagining of math class. Ani's timely, thought-provoking ideas about the relationship between math and society make this an important read for anyone concerned about how to strengthen democracy through education."
Michael Driskill, Chief Operating Officer, Math for America
" Dear Citizen Math is brilliantly simple and profoundly transformative. It sensitizes us to what math instruction could be if we let it, and creates a clear-eyed roadmap towards a more purposeful experience of teaching and learning."
Anurupa Ganguly, Founder, Prisms of Reality
"A powerful argument for why math education must evolve if we're to successfully address the range of issues we face as a society. This clarion call is long overdue."
Steve Leinwand, Principal Researcher, American Institutes for Research
"The question of why we need math is answered clearly and powerfully. Dear Citizen Math is a call to action regarding our responsibility as math educators and an important read for teachers, parents and policymakers."
Bob Lochel, High School Math Teacher, Hatboro, PA
" Dear Citizen Math is a love letter to math educators and leaders. It's hopeful. It's thoughtful. It challenges all of us who care about math education to reconsider the status quo and reimagine what's possible in math class."
Sara VanDerWerf, K-12 Math Lead, Minneapolis (MN) Public Schools
"This brings me joy and reignites my purpose as a math educator."
Daniel Rocha, Middle School Vice-Principal, Cutler-Orosi (CA) JUSD
184 pages, Paperback
Published April 30, 2021
20 people are currently reading
122 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 12, 2021
I strongly agree with Ani's push to make math classes more engaging, and especially more collaborative. Let's focus on the social learning of students working together, rather than the so-called "personalized instruction" of students spending hours on drills at a computer. Part 5 on "the social purpose of school" is excellent.
Apologies in advance for ranting about a minor concern:
I do have some quibbles with the way he talks about using real-world applications. I'm all for real-world, but with caution! There's an important fine line between "let's practice using the math that's needed to understand this complex societal problem" and "let's use math to SOLVE this problem!" Ani does mention such cautions, but at times I sensed a slight hint of the XKCD physicist's overconfidence...
Yes, math teachers should be prepared to discuss the linear equations or probability calculations underlying some important real-world disagreement in the news, and to carefully lead some exploration around those topics. But we can't necessarily expect them to have the subject-matter expertise (economics or biology or whatever) to understand where those linear equations *break down*, or how *where the data come from* affects the interpretation of the probability calculations. (See: math professor criticized by stats colleagues for his unjustifiable analysis of flawed ballot data.)
So instead of encouraging math teachers to cover stuff way outside their wheelhouse, in the long run I'd rather see schools break down walls between courses, and get (say) a math teacher, biology teacher, and school nurse to *co-teach* a course on epidemiology... as Ani himself suggests briefly (p.78). But of course that's a very idealistic aspiration for most schools, with huge hurdles to overcome, and meanwhile I can't blame Ani for focusing on changes that individual teachers can make in their own classrooms.
Maybe I wouldn't have these fears (of mathematical overconfidence) if the book had included a complete Citizen Math lesson plan, walked through in much more detail, showing how far class discussions tend to go and how they can be wrapped up responsibly. To make room, Ani could have edited down some of the repeated dramatic rhetoric calling us to action.
Still, it's an engaging and thought-provoking book, one which I'll return to as I keep planning my own Statistics courses.
Apologies in advance for ranting about a minor concern:
I do have some quibbles with the way he talks about using real-world applications. I'm all for real-world, but with caution! There's an important fine line between "let's practice using the math that's needed to understand this complex societal problem" and "let's use math to SOLVE this problem!" Ani does mention such cautions, but at times I sensed a slight hint of the XKCD physicist's overconfidence...
Yes, math teachers should be prepared to discuss the linear equations or probability calculations underlying some important real-world disagreement in the news, and to carefully lead some exploration around those topics. But we can't necessarily expect them to have the subject-matter expertise (economics or biology or whatever) to understand where those linear equations *break down*, or how *where the data come from* affects the interpretation of the probability calculations. (See: math professor criticized by stats colleagues for his unjustifiable analysis of flawed ballot data.)
So instead of encouraging math teachers to cover stuff way outside their wheelhouse, in the long run I'd rather see schools break down walls between courses, and get (say) a math teacher, biology teacher, and school nurse to *co-teach* a course on epidemiology... as Ani himself suggests briefly (p.78). But of course that's a very idealistic aspiration for most schools, with huge hurdles to overcome, and meanwhile I can't blame Ani for focusing on changes that individual teachers can make in their own classrooms.
Maybe I wouldn't have these fears (of mathematical overconfidence) if the book had included a complete Citizen Math lesson plan, walked through in much more detail, showing how far class discussions tend to go and how they can be wrapped up responsibly. To make room, Ani could have edited down some of the repeated dramatic rhetoric calling us to action.
Still, it's an engaging and thought-provoking book, one which I'll return to as I keep planning my own Statistics courses.
March 4, 2023
This book makes me so excited to get in the math classroom and create society conscious students. Looking with math was particularly poignant to me. I can’t wait to explore with my students!!
July 27, 2022
I received a copy of this book for free with the promise that I would write an honest review and pass it on to another math educator.
I had hoped that this book would help me learn more skills about how to bring in equity into my math classroom, but that was not the case. The author has a very idealist view of how math education should be updated in the United States. And while I agree that technology is not answer (individualized learning through Khan Academy or other online platforms), I had to disagree that companies like Illustrative Mathematics or individuals like Dan Meyer weren't headed in the correct direction for math education. The author believes that these "real-world" problems don't go far enough for our students to view the world through a mathematical lens.
The author suggests instead to have students analyze and debate real-life situations and using mathematics to back up their findings. The examples that are listed are several of the free lessons that are found on the author's website. (A paid membership is more than this teacher can afford right now.) These situations have no clear answer and intended to foster thought and discussion in the math classroom.
My concerns with this approach are 1) the time needed to find relevant situations to the math standards I'm required to teach; 2) the knowledge of how to create and put together and present these situations in a way that leads students in the desired directions; and 3) there is way too much controversy in 2022 for me to even attempt bringing in anything outside topic that is even slightly political into my classroom. (This book was published at the end of the 2020-2021 school year when teachers were still loved and respected for all they did in pivoting to online learning due to the Covid-19 virus. During the 2021-2022 school year, all that love and respect vanished because teachers were now evil for pushing equity and critical race theory and teaching banned books...)
In the end, this book caused me to do some thinking about how I can foster better communication between my students during class, but I don't think I'll be subscribing to the author's website or notifying parents and my district of potential controversial topics during my math class.
I had hoped that this book would help me learn more skills about how to bring in equity into my math classroom, but that was not the case. The author has a very idealist view of how math education should be updated in the United States. And while I agree that technology is not answer (individualized learning through Khan Academy or other online platforms), I had to disagree that companies like Illustrative Mathematics or individuals like Dan Meyer weren't headed in the correct direction for math education. The author believes that these "real-world" problems don't go far enough for our students to view the world through a mathematical lens.
The author suggests instead to have students analyze and debate real-life situations and using mathematics to back up their findings. The examples that are listed are several of the free lessons that are found on the author's website. (A paid membership is more than this teacher can afford right now.) These situations have no clear answer and intended to foster thought and discussion in the math classroom.
My concerns with this approach are 1) the time needed to find relevant situations to the math standards I'm required to teach; 2) the knowledge of how to create and put together and present these situations in a way that leads students in the desired directions; and 3) there is way too much controversy in 2022 for me to even attempt bringing in anything outside topic that is even slightly political into my classroom. (This book was published at the end of the 2020-2021 school year when teachers were still loved and respected for all they did in pivoting to online learning due to the Covid-19 virus. During the 2021-2022 school year, all that love and respect vanished because teachers were now evil for pushing equity and critical race theory and teaching banned books...)
In the end, this book caused me to do some thinking about how I can foster better communication between my students during class, but I don't think I'll be subscribing to the author's website or notifying parents and my district of potential controversial topics during my math class.
February 12, 2023
Agree with a lot of it, most of it probably. I don't think it is as revolutionary as he thinks. Sure math class is a good place to use math to consider the world, I certainly do that, I think most teachers do.
Lota of good points, lots of thinking to take away from it on if we should do more I suppose.
Lota of good points, lots of thinking to take away from it on if we should do more I suppose.
January 12, 2022
Great read for any math teacher on their journey to making the necessity of math more prevalent.
February 10, 2023
A must read for every maths teacher! An eye opening look at what mathematics teaching should and could be if we really wanted it to be.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews