Math literacy is the key to economic advancement, though the educational system of today hinders the progress of low-income black students in math, a civil rights leader said yesterday at the Institute of Race and Social Division at Boston University.
Robert Moses, founder of the Algebra Project and the author of a new book titled, “Radical Equation: Math Literacy and Civil Rights,” spoke of the importance of math literacy and the problems within the U.S. educational system.
Moses, who is most famous for his civil rights activities in the 1960s, continues his fight for equality through the Algebra Project. The Project, which he founded in 1982, is a national program that teaches math literacy to low-income rural and inner-city students, specifically blacks. The program reaches nearly 10,000 students and 300 teachers per year in 10 states and at 28 sites.
“Education is now what voting was in the 1960s,” he said. Moses had a profound effect on the sharecropper’s organization of the Freedom Democratic Party, a political party that helped blacks in the South gain the right to vote. He said he utilizes many of the organizational ideas he used during the civil rights movement in his development of the Algebra Project.
Professor Patricia Sullivan, a research associate at the Institute of Race and Social Division, organized the event. She described Moses as “a man who embodies the history of the civil rights movement and exemplifies the continuity of the movement.”
Moses emphasized tapping into the energy of those in demand. At one time it was the energies of the sharecroppers in Mississippi in the 1960s, but today it is a matter of tapping into the demands of low-income students who are slipping the through the cracks of the system, according to Moses.
He said he learned long ago, from fellow civil rights activist Ella Baker, there is a big distinction between leadership and organization. Moses said he now understands how to organize students, encouraging them to take on leadership roles.
He sees classrooms as meeting places. “The Algebra Project asks, ‘How do you use this meeting place for empowerment?’” he said.
Moses said one of the ways he empowers students is through the Young People’s Project, which he developed eight years ago. The Young People’s Project recruits, trains and deploys black youth as Math Literacy Workers. These youth then go into the community to be peer-leaders in the development of networks of mathematically literate students.
With the new education plans of the Bush administration and talk of educational reform, Moses said the emphasis is being wrongly placed. He said the government sees schooling as a vast sorting machine — from busing to magnet schools to the debate of vouchers. It is not about fixing the schools, he said, but about where to move the students.
Obenewa Amponsah, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and one of a handful of students who attended the event, agreed with Moses’ contentions on the sorting of students.
“I’ve thought about this before and wonder why. Maybe it’s less money to use vouchers, but it’s a shame,” she said. “The key is what is right for every child.”
While Moses emphasized the need to fix schools, he also provided several suggestions as to how the system needs to be changed. He emphasized the importance of good teachers and urged students to make teaching a profession.
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