ABSTRACT
Framing mathematics as a weapon in the struggle for social justice and making explicit the political nature of mathematics education in particular, and school in general, directly responds to the question students in math class (and school) perennially ask: “Why do I need to know this?” This chapter gives concrete examples of teaching mathematics for social justice from a Chicago public high school as well as evidence that students can develop sociopolitical consciousness in such a class; it also provides a theoretical framing for this practice, based on the work of Paulo Freire. This broader awareness that students develop, in part through the political experience of learning to read and write the world with mathematics, can support them in becoming effective change agents in the larger historical motion. Their mathematics education can contribute to this process.
