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Robert Moses, Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights The Algebra Project is a grass-roots initiative begun in Cambridge, Mass., to help poor children attain the mathematical skills necessary to achieve competence in today's technology-heavy workplace. Moses writes about the project's implementation in the Mississippi Delta, where a generation ago black sharecroppers raised up and demanded the right to vote. Moses draws an apt comparison between the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the Algebra Project's effort to organize students to fight for their right to mathematical literacy. Math knowledge, writes Moses, is not considered as valuable as reading and writing skills, but can be far more liberating for a student from a poor background. Without algebra, he writes, young blacks in the Delta will remain the "designated serfs of the computer age" in the same way that their parents and grandparents were serfs to Mississippi's landed gentry. Students, says Moses, must overcome limits placed by others on their intellectual abilities and take a hard look at their future prospects. They can gain that perspective by understanding the civil rights movement that preceded them. |
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