I. America’s caste system depends on caste in classrooms
The idea that America’s schools level the playing field for America’s children is a myth. The playing field has always been sharply tilted–or even completely walled off–to make it easier for the children of affluent families to inherit superior caste status. Even after Brown v. Board of Education, schools are where lower caste students–those with darker-skin and those living in poverty–are taught their subordinate place in U.S. society and in the U.S. economy.
“Our public schools are not broken, but are operating as designed. Our public schools were set up to provide unequal, inadequate education for black children. So that’s what they do.” –Nikole Hannah-Jones
Bob Moses calls it “sharecropper education”: individuals are only provided with as much education as their assigned economic role requires. In the sharecropper era, if their birth determined they would be a sharecropper, they didn’t need to be taught how to read and write. Today, if someone’s birth determines they will be assigned to minimum-wage jobs, they will not be provided the opportunity to learn college-level mathematics.
We must end these expectations. The caste system in U.S. society and in the U.S. education system must be eliminated. We are not trying to help only some students escape to a higher caste. We are trying to ensure that everyone stands on a solid floor of educational, material, civic, and political well-being.
Education in America is treated as if it were a scarce commodity, with fewer and fewer opportunities as students move through the system. The wealthier they are at birth, the more likely it is their family can afford “good” neighborhoods with “good” schools. In fact, however, education is limitless and everywhere. To rouse our humanity, actualize our dreams, and revitalize our democracy, we need to reclaim education. Every school should be a joy and a glory, where we are proud to be. Every college and university, community college, park and playground, rural by-way, and urban street corner should be understood as a place of cultural production, including as a place to teach, learn, and do mathematics.
II. The Scale of the Solution
The failure of our country to provide an equitable education for all helps to maintain a racial and socioeconomic caste system that strangles our aspirations to create a “more perfect union.” To eliminate the caste system in classrooms will require a national movement, as well as local movements, of young people, educators, families, community members, policy-makers, government officials, researchers, and others working together through national alliances. The country’s attention must be seized the way it has been seized by the uprising against racist police killings.
III. Working the Demand Side
The strategy of the Algebra Project has always been to “work the demand side” of eliminating caste. Math holds a key position in 21st century education because of the economics and politics of the Digital Information Age. Young people’s refusal to accept second-class citizenship has always been needed to spark the necessary conversations about justice that the country often refuses to have.
We have seen the role that the Algebra Project and the Young People’s Project (YPP) have played in leading young people to organize themselves to demand access to an educational, economic, and political place for themselves and for everyone.
Math is an organizing tool, not the goal in itself. The goal is for young people to think for themselves and then to decide to act as a group, demanding access for everyone. Essentially this is “self-determination.” The Algebra Project classrooms and Young People’s Project learning spaces are places where young people can experience thinking for themselves and then acting as a group as they learn successfully to challenge the injustices in their society.
Both the Algebra Project and the Young People’s Project have shown, at scale, that young people are willing to think for themselves and then act as a group in a national context to challenge the caste system of winners and losers. They have envisioned and created educational environments that go beyond scarcity to abundance and true self-determination.
IV. Concrete Actions
To eliminate the caste system in the U.S. educational system, we need many more classrooms similar to Algebra Project classrooms and learning spaces similar to those of the Young People’s Project so young people can experience thinking for themselves and acting as a group. This effort will require at least the following types of support, protection, advocacy, creativity, and generosity of spirit, leading to a mass national mobilization to eliminate caste in education. Specifically, this movement should include:
*A new definition of federal responsibility that specifies a constitutional right to a high quality education.
*Federal funding that goes directly to schools and school districts where students have been and continue to be denied a high-quality mathematics education.
*The continued development of rich, relevant, and joyful mathematics curricula and teaching practices in which students are viewed as capable learners, not deficient students.
*Support for family and community partnerships that promote mathematics learning outside of school.
*Funding of a corps of young people to serve as paid math mentors, teachers, and tutors in their schools and communities. Young people must be recognized as crucial assets in the teaching of mathematics.
*The elimination of structural barriers tied to systemic racism, poverty, and prejudice. These barriers include relentless testing, curricular tracking, and other forms of segregation based on narrow and racialized views of intelligence.
*Federal support for educator preparation programs and continuing professional education programs in which educators learn culturally responsive mathematics teaching practices and policies while also deepening their education in mathematics.
*The development of new assessment practices that provide educators, students, and families relevant and comprehensive information about students as learners and problem-solvers. We must develop new assessment systems that measure what we truly value, rather than valuing what we currently know how to measure.
*Increased federal support for researcher-practitioner collaborations. We need to increase our knowledge about effective mathematics education, particularly for students who have been underserved and thus unjustly treated by our educational system and shut out of our democracy.
*Federal hearings on students’ constitutional and civil right to a quality education, including in mathematics–the literacy of the 21st century.
*Legal challenges to the unequal and inequitable educational opportunities provided to students relegated to lower caste positions in U.S. society, such as students living in impoverished urban or rural school districts.
*A network of mapped local projects and initiatives in the U.S. that can serve as proof points demonstrating the elimination of caste in schools and school districts.
*The use of social media, such as virtual town halls, to raise consciousness about the caste system embedded in the U.S. education system, and strategies for eliminating that caste system.
*A list of allies in the effort to eliminate caste in U.S. classrooms, including legislators, policy-makers, teachers unions, foundations, advocacy groups, and nonprofit social service groups. There are many groups and individuals already working to dismantle caste in education who can be brought together to take local and national action.
*High-profile events demanding high quality education for all, including marches such as the Poor People’s March of 1968.