Reflection on "Math That Matters"

The author had a clear stand on how Math education should be related to social justice. Personally, I believe Math should be more "neutral" than other subjects like socials or history, although adding some content related to social justice would be beneficial as well. Different subjects should have their distinct focuses. While some of the subjects already have some society-related topics, mathematics should focus more on the content of mathematical computation and logic to prepare students for higher level mathematics and further education.

In this reading, the author intended to connect math teaching with social justice content. He believed that education should aim to produce well-developed people other than just academically capable students. As a major part of school education, math lessons should be connected with those social topics.

I believe most of these ideas could be also applicable to teaching in secondary school settings. In the reading, we can see that students have positive feedbacks to these ideas. Since mathematical content could be conceptual and abstract, making students feel they are doing "real life math" and they are learning the knowledge that really matters could be beneficial and applicable in secondary school as well. Teachers can have more projects that enable students to get a better understanding of the real world.

Unfortunately, there are certain topics of mathematics that will have some difficulties to be connected with real-life situations. Topics such as abstract geometry and mathematically proof are mainly based on logic. Those classes might not be the best choice to teach students about social justice content.