The article I chose was “Math and Media”.
Bob Peterson's chapter "Math and Media", on p. 147 makes a simple argument: math is a tool for reading power, not just numbers!!! Once students have that tool, a newspaper front page becomes data.
Peterson shows data from a FAIR study that spent a month counting who showed up in front-page photos across the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post. Women barely cracked double digits as photo subjects in two of the three papers, and even where women appeared more, none were shown as government or business figures. That category stayed almost entirely white men (GASP! SHOCKING!). Men of color were disproportionately pictured as athletes or criminals. And women of color on the Post's front page were framed as victims of fire, poverty, or addiction. He uses this to teach students about biases while still focusing on math content. He also suggests students don't just observe but they can write to the newspaper about the bias they find and use their data to teach younger kids, which turns the math into an act of civic advocacy, which is something not often seen in the math classroom!
Now what?
After reading this article, I immediately thought of ways to incorporate this into my own math class unit. The stuff I already teach fits perfectly with this (relative frequency, percentages, two-way tables, bar graphs). The difference is that instead of a dataset about candy colors, students generate their own data from something they actually read.
And then my brain immediately thought: HOW CAN I INCLUDE TECHNOLOGY! Instead of physical highlighters on a printed paper, students could do this with digital news. For example, a shared Google Doc or Slides where they highlight quotes/photos in a live article. This also means I can have them compare their own numbers against Peterson's older FAIR data to see whether anything's changed.
Go Read It
It is such a short but informative article on ways you can teach students about math, biases, and even history!!
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