Human Rights in the Curriculum: Mathematics
<< Join Amnesty hereThere are many things being spread ‘across the curriculum’ these days, and after literacy and numeracy, the other major one that is statutory is citizenship. But often bringing ethical and world issues into Maths is something that teachers feel uncertain about, and desperately in need of resourcing.
This new book from Amnesty International is an excellent way to start to cover some issues. Developed and improved over the last 5 years, the latest incarnation of this resource joins humanities, MFL and RE in a series of glossy books covering human rights in different subject areas. The resources were trialled in a variety of schools, including a special school, and have been improved with well-designed worksheets and clear instructions for the teacher.
A table at the front shows how each activity links to the national vurriculum, not only for England & Wales, but also Scotland and Northern Ireland. It also shows to which Article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (included in the back of the book) the worksheet relates.
Some activities are illustrative of other cultures, for example the Yoruba method of counting from West Africa, and Russian and Egyptian multiplication. Sometimes the activities can be a little ‘thin’, for example designing an Amish quilt, with basic symmetry work but no reason to study the issues of the Amish life.
Two successful worksheets that I tried were on Fair Trade coffee and chocolate. The explanation of how Fair Trade works is very clear, and students can be asked to find similar products in the supermarket and investigate their cost and popularity. The maths involved includes pie charts, time-series line graphs and percentages, and it is very easy to explain from the notes why trade needs to be made fairer.
A pair of longer activities that look more complicated are the Election and Gerrymandering worksheets, where students vote and see what the result would be under different electoral systems, and then look at how the division of constituencies affects the overall majority. Some other activities also appear difficult to relate to maths and would require a lot more preparation.
Overall this book has clear examples of all sorts of multicultural issues and is very clearly signposted to age, level and attainment target. It is certainly a book that would be a valuable addition to a departmental library, but would need to be pushed heavily into the work scheme to ensure the topics were covered properly.
A similar resource that is equally good is the Charis Mathematics series. Published by the Stapleford Centre (www.stapleford-centre.org), this addresses the spiritual dimension of maths as well as the moral and ethical. There are three books in the series, covering Key Stages 3 and 4. These books are particularly useful in faith schools, where the spiritual ethos needs to be demonstrated across the curriculum.
Adam Creen
Head of Maths, Salesian School, Chertsey, Surrey
<< Buy this book from Amnesty International
This A4 softback book is subtitled: ‘Bringing citizenship to,life in the maths classroom’, and it certainly will do that.
Amnesty International is the worldwide, independent, voluntary movement of people working to promote the human rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In its work it highlights many of the injustices and violations of rights that are perpetrated throughout the world by governments and regimes of all political flavours. This reviewer, declares an interest - I am a supporter of Amnesty International.
The ideas in this book were, in the same tradition as ATM’s own publications, developed and trialled by practising teachers incorporating human rights issues into the mathematics classroom. As it says in the introduction: “It is common to encounter the attitude that there is no connection between human rights and mathematics, which is based on the myth that mathematics is somehow a neautral or value-free subject.” Now I don’t suppose for a minute that any clear-thinking teacher would subscribe to that notion. However, under the pressures of the job, they may well require a little inspiration and support in actually bringing the two together in a meaningful and realistic way. Well the asnwer is here.
There are thirty activities with support material, data, information, background information - all are photocopiable for use in the classroom and provide an excellent means of furthering understanding of the situation(s) in which our fellow world citizens too often find themselves.
Algebra, data presentation, problem solving, shape and space,number, money, measurement - just some of the vehicles for citizenship... there is hardly an area of the curriculum untouched and unconsidered in this well thought out and good value-for-money publication.
World literacy, coffee prices, average wages, child labour, world literacy, water - just some of the vehicles for mathematics.
At an utterly reasonable £18.50 this publication is both useful, revealing, valuable and essential for any mathematics department, anywhere. The activities are not gratuitous agglomerations - they are well-thought out, researched and meaningful vehivcles for the delivery of mathmematics and citizenship education.
My only criticism is that it suggest that the activities are for secondary schools, as an ex-primary teacher myself, I would find nearly all the activities useable in a primary classroom too.
Marten Gallagher, ATM Web Editor
AI/Education in Human Rights Network, 2004
A4, spiral-bound, 84pp, illustrated.
ISBN 1 873328 49 4
Product Code: PB267
Price: £18.50
