Everywhere in life there are numbers: Questions for social justice educators in mathematics and everywhere else.

Adair, J.K. (2008). Everywhere in life there are numbers: Questions for social justice educators in mathematics and everywhere else. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(5), 408-415.


A good review should make you want to read the book. This article, a review of two books on teaching math for social justice by Eric Gutstein, did just that. The companion books, Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics (2006) and Rethinking Mathematics (2005) show how teachers can teach real-world mathematics in ways that can sharpen awareness of injustice and even produce strategies for social change. Of course, teaching for social justice is a slippery slope. Adair guides her discussion of these two books by focusing on three questions that get at three potential pitfalls of such teaching:

1. How much should teachers share with their students?
2. How do teachers balance academic knowledge and social justice?
3. How can students learn about social issues without feeling hopeless?

Adair’s review is mainly positive, and she shows depth of knowledge about the theories that underlie teaching for social justice, but she also is quite straightforward about the books’ flaws.