Robert P. Moses and Charles E. Cobb, Jr.'s Radical Equations

...And while Moses notes that there is a strong convergence between the work of the Algebra Project and the standards, methods, and academic agenda of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, he gives no evidence of any working relationship between the two organizations...

...No one should discount the role that fear of change plays in thwarting school reform efforts, but it is not the only problem...

...Moses also accepts too easily the notion that the need for literacy and civics education has largely been met, and that numeracy is the problem now confronting poor children...

...RADICAL EQUATIONS: MATH LITERACY AND CIVIL RIGHTS by Robert P. Moses with E. Charles E. Cobb, Jr...

...But even if Moses goes too far in the direction of an exclusive focus on numeracy in the middle school years, he has good reason for stressing it...

...It is this vision that Moses brings to his work on the Algebra Project, a program to teach algebra to middle school students in inner-city and poor rural schools...

...What is true of the country as a whole is even more striking with respect to schools serving the poor...

...Unfortunately, Radical Equations does not examine the ways in which literacy acquisition has always been a central focus of American struggles for emancipation and empowerment...

...Students are also encouraged to serve as mentors for their younger compatriots, with math literacy workers modeled after the civil rights workers of an older genera 158 n DISSENT /Fall 2001 tion...

...Moses himself is a teachers' teacher...

...How teachers receive a classroom reform effort such as the Algebra Project depends in large part upon the way it is presented to them...

...Or is it a partnership effort with teachers that respects and develops their professional knowledge and abilities and seeks their ongoing input...

...Reading Radical Equations from the perspective of the classroom teacher, one finds mixed answers to these questions...

...Or is it a joint venture with organized teacher involvement and avenues for teacher participation in decision making...

...Throughout Radical Equations the authors imply that teachers who resist participation in their program do so out of a fear of change, a fear of learning how to teach in new ways...

...The celebration of individual teachers, such as Mehrling and Godfrey, is combined with descriptions of programs that collapsed for lack of board and administrative support, or because a key administrator left (a common occurrence in urban school districts...

...Trips on subways become the basis for students to grasp concepts of relative position and direction...

...The entire project began with Moses's own experience as a parent working with his oldest daughter on her mathematics...

...Does a student who learns algebra in the middle school years, like a sharecropper who registered to vote for the first time in the 1960s, then possess the means to reach the "promised land" of full citizenship...

...Are children in inner-city and poor rural schools the dispossessed sharecroppers of our age...

...Most important, some young people connected to the Algebra Project are organizing to demand quality education...

...Except for a passing mention of the "freedom schools" of the civil rights movement, this history and its lessons are neither investigated nor evaluated...

...The only mention of local teacher unions occurs when one teacher threatens to file a grievance in order to avoid teaching an Algebra Project class...

...But the ability to handle these issues will determine whether progressive school reform will take root and grow...

...Does it come as yet another top-down mandate from the district, the board, the superintendent, or the principal...

...21 IS MATH EDUCATION today's civil rights struggle...

...The account of the civil rights movement highlights Moses's vision of grassroots organizing, a process in which ordinary men and women engage the issues that are important to their community and, in so doing, empower themselves, developing into leaders of a democratic, participatory mobilization...

...The Algebra Project connects the real life experiences of the students with the specialized language of mathematics...

...For an overview of the Algebra Project, visit www.algebra.org .) Begun in 1982, the program is now in place in more than twenty sites in thirteen states...

...T T HE ALGEBRA PROJECT needs to understand teachers...

...To the dismay of more conservative observers, critical thinking about power relations and the history of the civil rights movement are integrated into the learning of algebra...

...Disproportionately poor and of color, these students end up in a sharecropper-like status of poverty, deprivation, and marginality...

...At first glance, there seems to be a world of difference between organizing people to vote—the most basic of citizenship rights— and organizing young adolescents to master algebra...

...Algebra, like voting rights in the 1960s, is the key to full citizenship...

...In Radical Equations, Bob Moses, the legendary organizer of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) Mississippi Freedom Summer and voter registration drives, joins with a former SNCC colleague, Charles Cobb, to raise these questions and to make a powerful argument that the answer is yes...

...But Moses makes a persuasive argument that in a knowledge-based economy, young people who are not literate and numerate are denied access to productive work and to meaningful participation in society...

...Exemplary teachers, such as Mary Lou Mehrling (the teacher of Moses's daughter) and Lynne Godfrey (who piloted the original Algebra Project curriculum), figure prominently in the narrative...

...Most experienced teachers have been through cycle after cycle of superficial change projects, each imposed from the top without any meaningful teacher input and without the provision of real professional development or supporting resources...

...But there are questions regarding the approach taken by the Algebra Project to organizing parents and teachers...

...When teachers are struggling to provide quality education in the face of overcrowded classrooms, poorly maintained buildings, and a lack of books and learning materials, they are sure to resist when the same administrators who won't help on a day-to-day basis send them to a two-day seminar where they are told that their attitudes are the fundamental problem...

...By contrast, teachers do appear in Radical Equations, but with contradictory messages concerning their role in the Algebra Project...

...This is true not only for the African-American freedom struggle, starting with the resistance to laws that prohibited enslaved men and women from learning how to read and write, but for the trade union and feminist movements as well...

...In this process, Moses draws upon both the educational philosophies of John Dewey and Jean Piaget, on the one hand, and the analytical philosophy of mathematics developed by Moses's late Harvard professor W V. 0. Quine, on the other...

...This suggests that the Algebra Project at these sites relied too much on an initiative from the top and never took deep root among the teachers and parents in the schools...

...For example, students address issues such as how to overcome the anti-intellectual youth culture that treats academic success as the sign of being a "nerd" and "acting white...

...Precisely because the Algebra Project shows such promise in confronting the "savage inequalities" of American education, precisely because it offers us hope, we must hold it to high standards...

...Mathematics then becomes a method of communication, problem solving, and reasoning...

...Is it presented as the finished product of non-teacher "experts"—usually education school academics—who have a prepackaged program that teachers must be trained in and follow...

...Teachers are often BOOKS more cynical about, than fearful of, proposed changes...

...these "change" edicts appear as "flavors of the month" that have produced a great deal of paper and bureaucratic work but very little in the way of educational progress...

...He commutes to Mississippi every week to spend three days in the classroom, teaching mathematics to adolescents, where he roots the continuing development of the project's pedagogy, model lessons, and curricular interventions in concrete educational experience...

...The challenge that the Algebra Project and other authentic school reform efforts face is convincing classroom teachers that they are truly useful...

...DISSENT / Fall 2001 n 1 59...

...While American students rank near the top in international comparisons of literacy skills, they are more mediocre on numeracy and science skills, and their standing declines draDISSENT / Fall 2001 n 1 57 BOOKS matically during the middle school years...

...Not enough teachers in these early grades have a solid background in mathematics, and mathematics education as a field has been resistant to the introduction of student-centered, ''hands-on" pedagogical methods that actively engage students with the subject matter...

...Aside from a mention of the role of Cambridge parents at the very start of the Algebra Project twenty years ago, however, parents simply do not appear as key actors in Radical Equations, either as partners in their children's learning or as a force for change in education...

...The first is the story of Moses's participation in the civil rights movement and the second is the tale of how he organized the Algebra Project, employing the lessons he had drawn from his civil rights movement experiences...

...These theories are translated into learning exercises in which students use African drumming and musical rhythms or cooking recipes to explore concepts such as ratio and proportion...

...Radical Equations consists of two distinct, but related, narratives...

...Is this another "here today, gone tomorrow" program...

...He is now special representative for high schools at the United Federation of Teachers...

...In general, the middle school grades are the most troubled and neglected years of K-12 American education, and mathematics instruction at this level is particularly poor...

...Or are the people connected to it committed to digging in for the long haul...

...By raising these difficult questions, I am holding Moses, the Algebra Project, and Radical Equations to a high standard...

...The educational powers that be are constantly sending the message that it is standardized test results—not teaching and learning— that constitute the bottom line for schools...

...No other leader in educational change efforts is so grounded in the world of the classroom...

...LEO CASEY taught for fifteen years in an inner-city high school in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y...

...But teachers as a collective political force never appear, despite the fact that they are the Algebra Project's most natural political allies...

...This criticism ignores the fact that the Algebra Project organizes young people around their educational needs...

...After all, if all middle school students can learn algebra, shouldn't we be able to learn how to make school work for them...

...Algebra, according to Moses, is a "gate keeper" course: those who master it in the middle school years are on a college track, those who do not are fortunate if they complete high school...

...C C RITICS ON THE left such as Meta Mendel Reyes (in Reclaiming Democracy) complain that Moses has surrendered his vision of participatory democracy for efforts that seek to improve the lives of individuals without challenging fundamental power relations...

...The passionate devotion of Moses to the classroom is com bined with a top-down model of teacher training...