CHAPTER 10

CONNECTING COMMUNITY,
CRITICAL, AND CLASSICAL
KNOWLEDGE IN TEACHING
MATHEMATICS
FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Eric Gutstein
University of Illinois-Chicago, USA

ABSTRACT

In this article, I describe conceptually, and give an example of, an aspect of

teaching mathematics for social justice-teachers' attempts to connect three
forms of knowledge: communit)I, critical , and classical. The setting is a Chi-
cago public high school, o riented toward social justice, whose students are
all low-income African Americans and Latinas/ os. Drawing from the experi-
ence of creating and teaching a mathematics project that emerged from a
central disruption in the life of the school community, I discuss complexities
and challenges of creating cun;culum from students' lived experiences that
simultaneously develops their critical sociopo litical consciousness and math-
ematical proficiencies.

International Pers/Jectives on Social justice in Mathematics Education, pages 153-167

Copyright © 2008 by Information Age Publishing
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 153
154 E. GUTSTEIN

INTRODUCTION

Teaching and learning ma thematics for social justice has its roots in the
mathematics education work of Skovsmose (1994, 2004) and Frankenstein
(1987, 1998), among others. It builds on work in critical pedagogy, in partic-
ular, Freire 's (1970/ 1998) and others such as Giroux (1983) and McLaren
(2007), and also draws upon culturally releva,nt pedagogy (Ladson-Billings,
1994, 1995b; Tate, 1995) . Though proponents and researchers describe it
in different ways (e.g., some refer to it as "critical mathematics"), there
are certain common pedagogical aims. Two of the most central are that
students develop both critical consciousness and mathematical compe ten-
cies, and there is also the view that these two areas of learning need to be
dialectically interwoven by both teachers and students in a conscious man-
ner. That is, ma thematics should be a vehicle for students to deepen their
grasp of the sociopolitical contexts of their lives, and through the process of
studying their realities-using mathematics-they should strengthen their
conceptual understanding and procedural proficiencies in mathematics.
One of the principal ways for teache rs to support students in moving to-
ward these interconnected goals is for the students to engage in mathe mati-
cal investigations in the classroom of specific aspects of their social and
physical world (see Gutstein & Pete rson, 2005 for reports by K-12 teachers
on efforts to do so).
There are few extended studies of teaching and learning mathematics
for social justice in K-1 2 urban classrooms (Brantlinger, 2006; Gutstein,
2006c; Turner, 2003). These reports sh ed light on tl1e complexities of en-
acting c1itical mathematics pedagogy and certainly point out some of the
difficulties in what is mostly uncharted territory. In tl1is brief a rticle, I will
highlight o ne particularly challenging quandary and illustrate it with a
short vignette. The re is much work to do in theorizing and practicing social
justice mathematics, a nd my purpose here is to point out some issues that
I believe currently face those of us who want students to learn mathemat-
ics as a vehicle for social change. The matter I discuss is.the complexity of
building on students' and communities' knowledge while simultaneously
supporting the d evelopment of their mathematical competencies and criti-
cal awareness. I examine it from the perspective of my own work in Chicago
(and its public schools) where I have lived , worked, and taught for the past
12 1h years, first teaching my own middle-school mathematics class for sev-
eral years, and for the past few years, working with a new social justice high
school in mathematics classes.
 Connecting Community, Critical, and Classical Knowledge 155

CONNECTING COMMUNITY, CRITICAL,

AND CLASSICAL KNOWLEDGE

We 1 have adopted a framework in the school's mathematics team of trying

to synthesize what we call community, critical, and classical knowledge (Gut-
stein, 2006c), or the "three C's." These concepts are not new, but their
interrelations have been under-elaborated with respect to mathematics
education. We recognize that these may be contested definitions, and we
consider the categories (and our thinking) to be provisional and fluid. By
community know/,edge, we mean several different but related components of
knowledge and culture. It refers to what people already know and bring
to school with them. This includes the knowledge that resides in individu-
als and in communities that usually has been learned out of school (e.g.,
their funds of knowkdge, Moll, Amanti, & Gonzalez, 2005). It involves how
people understand their lives, their communities, power relationships, and
the ir society. We also mean the cultural knowledge people have, including
their languages and the ways in which they make sense of their experienc-
es. Some refer to this as "indigenous knowledge," "traditional knowledge,"
"popular knowledge," or "informal knowledge" (including with respect to
mathematics, e.g., Knijnik, 1997; Mack, 1990). Two examples serve to illus-
trate our meaning. In Rethinhing Columbus, Tajitsu Nash and Ireland (1998)
describe the knowledge of a typical Amazonian elder, who

... has memorized hundreds of sacred songs and stories; plays several musi-
cal instruments; and knows the h abit and habitat of hundreds of forest ani-
mals, birds, and insects, as well as the medicinal uses of local plants. He can
guide his sons in building a two-story tall house using only axes, machetes,
and materials from the forest. He is an expert agronomist. He speaks several
languages fluently; knows precisely how he is related to several hundred of his
closest kin; and has acquired sufficient wisdom to share his home peacefully
with in-laws, cousins, children, and grandchildren. Female elders are compa-
rably learned and accomplished. (p. 112)

The other example is one from Freire's Pedagogy of Hope (1994, pp.
44-49). In it, Freire recounted a conversation with a group of Chilean farm-
ers. They were having a rousing discussion when the farmers suddenly si-
lenced themselves and asked the "professor" (i.e., Freire) to tell them what
he knew. Freire wrote that he was unsurprised by this, having expelienced
it before, and proceeded to challenge the farmers to a game. They were to
stump each other with questions that the other could not answer. Freire
went first and asked, "What is the Socratic maieutic?" The farmers laughed,
could not answer, then baffled Freire with the question, "What's a contour
156 E. GUTSTEIN

curve?" The game continued, each stumping the other, until finally the
score was 10-10. The point was clear-Freire's knowledge and the farmers'
knowledge were both valid and valuable. Each knew things that the other
did not; each had to respect the others'-and their own-knowledge. What
the farmers knew, from years of shared lived experience, is what we term
community knowledge.
Critical knowledge is knowledge about the sociopolitical conditions of
one's immediate and broader existence. It includes knowledge about why
things are the ways that they are and about the historical, economical, po-
litical, and cultural roots of va1;ous social phenomena. Various authors
(e.g., Giroux, 1983; Macedo, 1994) described critical literacies, and we essen-
tially mean the same idea. Freire (Freire & Macedo, 1987) referred to it as
"reading the world." In his earlier work on literacy campaigns, he discussed
culture circles in which groups of workers, peasants, and farmers studied
codifications (representations of daily life, usually pictorial) and reflected
on their meanings (Freire, 1970, 1973). Those sessions allowed the cul-
ture circle members to examine their lives from different perspectives, and
the process of collectively decoding the representations led the individu-
als to deepen their understanding of the phenomena. Freire's pedagogy
thus provided the opportunities for people to transform their community
knowledge about the everyday world that they had often normalized (e.g. ,
we have no work because there are no jobs) into critical knowledge about
the same situations (e.g., we have no work because those in power control
the distribution ofjobs and land, and it is to their advantage to keep some
of us unemployed).
It is often the case that community knowledge already is c1;tical, but
context matters. For example, relatively young adolescents (e.g., middle-
school students) may have knowledge about their life situations, but it is not
often critical. Whether or not it is critical depends on several things, includ-
ing their experiences, those of their families and communities, the level
of political consciousness at the time, and the strength of existing social
movements. In contrast, adults who are engaged in various struggles may
have community knowledge that is quite critical. As an el{ample, a battle is
currently taking place in Chicago to stop the displacement of low-income
people of color (in particular, African Americans) through gentrification
(Lipman & Haines, in press) . Many adults in the affected communities have
a clear and c1;tical understanding of the political forces allied against them,
including their geneses and various forms of subterfuge. I have heard par-
ents in communities where public housing h as been demolished (and not
replaced) and schools closed (and reopened for "new" residents) eloquent-
ly elaborate who and what forces are responsible for their removal, and
why. So the lines between community and c1;tical knowledge are not always
clear. A major thesis of Freire's work is that problem1Josing pedagogies can
 Connecting Community, Critical, and Classical Knowledge 157

present life situations back to people (whether in or out of school) so that

they may pose questions themselves and transform their community knowl-
edge into a more critical state, and consequently be drawn into action to
challenge unequal, oppressive relations of power.
The lines between classical and tl1e other forms of knowledge are not so
clear either. Classical know1£dge generally refers to formal, in-school, abstract
knowledge. Our focus in terms of classical knowledge is that students have
the competencies they need to pass all the gatekeeping tests they will face
and to have full opportunities for life, education, and career choices. Classi-
cal mathematical knowledge clearly has high-status in society as many have
commented (e.g., Apple, 2004) as well as a strong Eurocentric bias (Fran-
kenstein & Powell, 1994;Joseph, 1997). Nonetheless, while we critique it,
we recognize its power and cultural capital and argue that students need to
develop it for several reasons. They need it for personal, family, and com-
munity survival, especially for students who come from economically mar-
ginalized spaces. But even more than that, we believe it is cmcial that stu-
dents approp1iate, in this case, the "master's tools" with which to dismantle
his house (cf. Lorde, 1984). We subsc1ibe to Freire and Macedo's (1987)
orientation toward what they referred to as "dominant" knowledge:

To acquire the selected knowledge contained in the dominant curriculum

should be a goal attained by subordinate students in the process of self and
group empowerment. They can use the dominant knowledge effectively in
their struggle to change the material and historical conditions that have en-
slaved them. (p. 128)

To connect the three types of knowledge is no simple matter for many

reasons. First, there is the question of how might teachers learn students'
community knowledge. In Brazil, where Freire and others practice(d) these
ideas, the process by which teachers investigate the generative themd of a
community is complicated. In Porto Alegre's Citizen School Project, there is a
lengthy and involved ten-step process through which teachers, in collabo-
ration with neighborhood adults, study community knowledge to develop
school-wide, interdisciplinary curriculum based on the generative themes
(Gan din, 2002). Freire (1970) elaborated his view of how researchers might
investigate the themes within a specific community, and this also involved
a detailed, multi-step process. There are still more issues, such as the ques-
tion of how might teachers study community knowledge when they are out-
siders to the community, language, and culture of their students (Delpit,
1988), or the fact that the generative themes identified by neighborhood
adults may not coincide with those of the youth in schools (I. Martins de
Martins, personal communication.July 2003).
Once educators begin to have a grasp of the community knowledge of
their students and their families, then they can try to create curriculum,
158 E. GUTSTEIN

based on those themes, that will support both the development of critical
and classical knowledges. This also is quite complicated. First, the re are the
time constraints imposed on teachers and their working day (which also
affects their capacity to investigate generative themes, although in Porto
Alegre, teachers were paid for that work). When do teachers have the time
to develop new innovative curriculum, let alone cope with all the other
d emands of teaching? For example, creating standa rds-based refo1m math-
ematics curricula in the U.S. took massive amounts of time, money, and
people. The reform cuniculum with which I am most familiar, Mathematics
in Context (MiC) (NCRMSE & Fl, 1997-8), required perhaps $8 million, 5
years, and close to 50 people working in two countiies before it was fully
opera tional. It is u·ue that MiC was a connected , cohesive curriculum span-
ning four years (grades 5- 8), and obviously developing cuniculum for just
one school community would require less time. But the time and people
power alone needed to create quality curricula testify to the necessary re-
sources required.
Second, to develop cuniculum requires a different knowledge base than
teaching, despite the interrelationship of the two. My personal knowledge
of MiC's development a nd my professional judgment suggest that there
are talented curriculum d esigners who would have difficulty teaching MiC
in urban classrooms because, for example, they may not connect that well
with the students nor their communities. This is also probably tme for oth-
er successful curriculum projects whose autho rs are prima rily unive rsity-
based mathematics educators. Conversely, there are successful mathematics
teache rs in urban schools who do not h ave the knowledge to create rich
mathematics curriculum.
Third, successfully navigating the requireme nts of a standards-based
math ema tics curriculum is difficult enough, especially unde r the pressure
of neolibe ral accountability consuaints like the No Child Left Behind legisla-
tion in the U.S. tha t mandates repeated testing. But to do so while simulta-
neously providing opportunities for stude nts to develop critical knowledge
in mathematics classes is a n added laye r of complexity (Brantlinger, 2006;
Gutstein, 2006c) . It is gene rally accepted tha t good (math~matics) teachers
need to have content knowledge (Hill & Ball, 2004), pedagogical content
knowledge (Shulma n, 1986), and knowledge of students and their commu-
nities (Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b); but in addition, to develop c1itical
knowledge, teache rs also need deep knowledge of social moveme n ts, histo-
ry, culture, political econo my, and local and global sociopolitical forces af-
fecting stude nts' lives, as well as particular dispositions toward social change
and the politics of knowledge (Gutste in, 2006a). Even whe n teachers do
h ave these various knowledge bases, ensuring that the mathematics does
not get lost whe n developing critical knowledge and supporting students'
sociopolitical consciousness (in mathematics class) is no easy task-the dia-
 Connecting Community, Critical, and Classical Knowledge 159

lectical inte rrelationships are complicated and more attention needs to be

focused in this area, and more experience accumulated (Brantlinger, Bue n-
rostro, Gutstein, & Mukhopadhyay, 2007).
In sh ort, for many reasons, it is quite complex to create curriculum that
starts from students' and their communities' lived experiences/ knowledge
and then simultaneously and with rich interconnections supports both math-
ematical power I classical ma thematical knowledge and a critical awareness
of one's social context. No such mathematics curriculum currently exists
that is broadly applicable partly because of the specificity of local situations,
although there are several examples of projects and units of social justice
mathematics that have been taught in urban schools (see, for example,
Brantlinger, 2006; Frankenstein, 1998; Gutstein, 2006c; Gutstein & Peter-
son , 2005; Osler, 2006; Turner, 2003). It will not be easy to create high-
quality social justice mathematics curricula that teachers can adapt to their
local settings, and even allowing for good curricula, the school change and
professional development literature is clear that curriculum alone does no t
ensure effective and appropriate teaching-nor real learning (Fennema &
Scott Ne lson, 1999). Efforts to work on connecting the "three C's," however
we describe them, are needed, and how to do so is an open question with
respect to both theory and practice.

An Example of Connecting The Three C's in Practice

I turn now to a short example of our work in a Chicago public high school
for social justice in which we attempted to connect community, critical, and
classical ma thematical kn owledge (see Gutstein, 2006b, for details). Briefly,
a new school was built and opened in Fall 2005 after a group ofresidents in
a Mexican immigrant communi ty (Chicago's Little Village) went o n a 19-day
hunger strike in 2001 (Russo, 2003). The reside n ts struck for a new school
for their community; the school board promised it, then reneged ; and the
hunger strike was tl1e culmination of a multi-year struggle for a new school
in the overcrowded n eighborhood. The new school building houses four
small schools, each with a maximum of 350-400 studen ts, and each with
a differe nt community-determined theme. The school I work with is the
social justice high school (known to most as "Sojo").
Although Little Village is overwhelmingly Mexican, the Chicago pub-
lic school (CPS) boa rd, unde r a 1980 federal desegregation mandate, ra-
cially integrated the ope n-enrollment, neighborhood school by drawing
the attendance lines into a bordering African American community, North
Lawndale. Thus the schools are 30% African American and 70% Latina/o.
However, by changing the attendance bounda1ies, the sch ool board also
limited Latina/ o enrollment, causing friction fo r some Little Village resi-
160 E. GUTSTEIN

dents who saw their children's spots in the new building "taken" by African
Americans from North Lawndale. Furthe1more, given Chicago's history of
segregation, racist exclusion , and neighborhood and turf lines, there is an
ambivalent relationship between the two communities. Students for the
most part intermingle and work together in the school, although there are
real tensions ou tside in the neighborhood.
In J anuary 2006, during the first year when each school had about 100
ninth graders, a local Latino politician held a press conference a nd pro-
posed a public referendum that the boundaries be redrawn to exclude
North Lawndale African Ame1ican students. Black students, understand-
ably angry, hurt, and scared, immedia tely went to teachers to voice con-
cerns about being removed from the school. Our mathematics team, on
the initiative of one of th e math teach ers, quickly developed a mathematics
project (the "Bounda1ies Project") whose central question was this: What is
a fair solution for both communities?
While our assessment is that there were weaknesses in the project (e.g.,
we threw it together in two days because of the immediacy of the issue,
and it was not clear h ow much mathematics students learned), our analysis
also suggests that there were some considerable strengths. Most notable
was that students were quite engaged, and we believe this is because the
work students did was genuine. No one knew (or knows) the answer to the
central question because, in fact, the solution to the problem has to be
eventually determined by the two communities working together in con-
certed effort to ensure that there are enough spots in quality schools for
all the students- something that is not the situation now, even with the
new school. The project tied directly into students' lived experiences and
generative themes-that is, it built on students' (and their families' ) com-
munity knowledge. The issues of interconnections between the two neigh-
borhoods, their histories, and students' stereotypes toward each other all
surfaced. Politically, the two main points with which we wanted students to
grapple (i.e., the development of critical knowledge) were that the differ-
ences between the communities were far outweighed by the commonalities,
despite historical divide-and-conquer techniques used to pit communities
of color against each other, and the above point that ultimately there were
not enough quality sch ools for all the students. Mathematically, we asked
sn1dents several questions about the numbers of Black and Brown students
in the building at full enrollment given ratios different than the current
30:70, and the probability ofa student from each community being accept-
ed in a lottery (using different possible ratios). We also h ad them study
census tract data and consider how to e nlarge the boundaries in North
Lawndale so that students from there would have the same ch ance to be
accepted as the Little Village students. This entailed calculating acceptance
probabilities for both communities, with various ratios of African American
 Connecting Community, Critical, and Classical Knowledge 161

and Latina/ a students- and this was further complicated mathematically

because each neighborhood has different numbers of high-school aged stu-
dents. Students also examined data for other nearby schools, as well as local
area maps, a nd overall, they mathematized the central problem of having
one new school building for too many students from two different com-
munities. In our assessment, the complexity of the mathematics lay more
in this requirement to draw out the mathematical components of the situa-
tion, than in any specific subpart or individual problem within the project.
While we know that a week-long project can have only limited impact,
we locate the project within a four-year program of teaching and learn-
ing mathematics for social justice. We appreciate that the political aim of
students using mathematics to develop an awaren ess of common issues for
both communities is difficult to achieve {although we also note that the
whole school is making its way toward social justice pedagogy and curricu-
lum ). First, the way CPS altered the originally planned school boundar-
ies was something we had to contend with- that is, the historical tensions
were reignited and in the air. Second, the local politician exacerbated these
by pitting the neighborhoods against each other and proposing that th e
schools serve only Little Village students. Third, the politics of the immigra-
tion rights movement and t11e huge immigration marches nationally and in
Chicago (where close to a million people participated in two large demon-
strations) interacted with the specific conditions in the school campus in
which African American students reported (to African American staff) t11at
they did not fully feel their place in the building.
The opportunity is t11ere to work with students to deconstruct and politi-
cally explore this polarized context, but existing contradictions can impede
the process. For example, only 5 of about 30 African American Sojo stu-
dents attended the May 1, 2006 pro-immigrant rights rally in Chicago (the
larger of the two). I ran into an Af1ican American friend at the march who
felt uncomfortable with two of the ubiquitous, mass-produced signs at the
rally: "We Are All Immigrants" and "Immigrants Built America," neither
of which is histo1ically accurate and both of which negate the presence,
cont1ibutions, experiences, and exploitation of both African Americans
and Native Americans. There is a racially coded subtext here that is visible
in the school and larger society both , with respect to "good" and "not-so-
good" "minorities." Chicago employers report that they prefer hiring Mexi-
can workers to African American ones because they were supposedly more
"compliant" (Lipman, 2002). When asked about popular perceptions in
ilieir community about African Americans, Latina/ a students report the
stereotype that "Black people are lazy," while some African American stu-
dents suggest that Mexican workers are "taking our jobs." A recent New
York Times article (Swarns, 2006) conveyed these misconceptions well. In
a Souiliern U .S. town in the state of Georgia, where Africans and African
16 2 E. GUTSTEIN

Americans created most of the wealth and toiled mightily for centuries ei-
ther as slaves or low-paid, exploited workers, a 51-year old Mexican worker
was quoted as saying:

They don't like to work, and they're always in jail. If there 's hard work to
be done, the blacks, they leave and they don't come back. That's why the
bosses prefer Mexicans and why there are so many Mexicans working in the
factories here.

The point here is that community knowledge is affected by popular mis-

conceptions and myths.
Although this project had its limitations ( Gutstein, 2006b), a strength
was that we were able to tap into and build on students' community knowl-
edge, and students were able to develop some c1itical and classical mathe-
matical knowledge. The experience gives us (and others) some insight into
the challenges and possibilities of teaching mathematics for social justice,
although this was not a case in which we consciously investigated students'
community knowledge. Rather, the generative theme emerged because of
the dynamics of the situation. We might have ignored students' realities
and kept to the already planned cur riculum. Our analysis is that to have
done so would have been a mistake and a missed opportunity to engage
students and provide them a chance in school to examine their own lived
experiences, deepen their sociopolitical awareness, and learn mathematics.
One positive outcome we point to is that involving students in this particu-
lar project played a role in enculturating students to social justice pedagogy
and reshaping their views of mathematics; theirjournaling after the project
provided evidence for this assertion.

CONCLUSION

In the cuITent school year (2006-07), our mathematics team has begun
planning a more indepth, extended unit centered arou~d displacement in
an attempt to build on a generative theme salient for both communities.
The specific local and broader national contexts shape our understanding
of displacement. First, gentrification is a major issue in Chicago. While it
affects many urban areas in the U.S., it is particularly severe here because
the city power su·ucture (i.e., Mayor Daley and his administration, major fi-
nance capitalists, and the real-estate/ development machine) is in the throes
of attempting to reshape Chicago as a global city (Lipman, 2004). T he
mayor and the school board are currently in the process of closing 60-70
neighborhood schools and creating 100 "new" ones, most of which are in
the same school buildings but with large infusions of resources historically
 Connecting Community, Critical, and Classical Knowledge 163

denied in the past (Lipman & Haines, in press). Many of the communities
experiencing school closings are being rapidly gentrified. North Lawndale
is very much on the list of affected neigh borhoods, and has been referred
to as "ground zero" by activists battling the redevelopment although the
amount of new construction (e.g., condos) is still relatively small as of this
writing. Thus displacement in the North Lawndale context refers to the on-
coming gentrification in the community. Second, in Little Village, displace-
ment refers to tl1e removal of people out of the country altogether, back
to Mexico. The U .S. Ho use of Representatives passed a bill in September
2006 to build a 700-mile fence along tl1e Mexican-U .S. border, and shortly
afterwards, the Senate began conside1ing tl1e fen ce as well. In a small town
of 37 ,000 located about 40 miles from Chicago, in early October 2006, town
officials proposed an ordinance to penalize landlords who rented to un-
documented immigrants and employers who hi red them. Three thousand
people showed up at the Town Hall in protest. Many residents of Little Vil-
lage are undocumen ted, and the threat of expulsion from the community
and country altogether is quite real. Thus both communities are faced with
issues of displacement.
An appropriate challenge which we pose to ourselves is h ow do we know
that this matters to students and community members, that this is really a
generative theme when we have not done (for example) the thorough in-
vestigation conducted by Brazilian teachers to uncover community knowl-
edge? In October, 2006, we conducted focus group discussions and in-class
discussions with small groups of students to explore this. In our conversa-
tions with close to 60% of tl1e sophomore class, students overwhelmingly
expressed support and interest in the proposed unit. We also know, by the
strength of the social movements for immigrant righ ts and against ge ntri-
fication, th at these issues matter profoundly to people (both adults and
youth ) in the affected communities. The tre mendous number of people in
the streets in support of immigrants a nd their 1ights is powerful evidence of
this, and while the struggle against gentrification involves far fewer people,
the level of consciousness and determination in impacted neighborhoods
is quite high (Lipman & Haines, in press). We can read the world (Fre ire &
Macedo, 1987) and understand clearly that the issue of displacement has
deep meaning in Chicago.
While we have sketched out a political framework for this project, and
have some clarity on how the community and c1itical knowledge fit in,
tl1ere are certainly m ultiple challenges ahead of us. A key one is the con-
nection of classical knowledge. T he mathematics of change is central in
understanding displacement in North Lawndale and Little Village. Spe-
cific issues we plan to have studen ts investigate include the changing de-
mographics of the communities, the change in the cost and availability of
properties, and the issues of affordability for people in th e area. We want
164 E. GUTSTEIN

students to analyze the trends and the possibilities, as well as to think about
possible actions to take, in conjunction with activists in their communities.
We know from othe r gentrifying Chicago neighborhoods that the battle to
stay in th e area is an extremely difficult one, but the re are community de-
velopment corporations that are building or rehabilitating housing that is
fairly affordable to many existing reside n ts. This also entails mathematical
analysis. Finally, we plan on having students investigate tl1e mathematics of
home ownership, loans, mortgages, and development schemes so that they
begin to unde rstand how capitalism works, and how real estate developers
and banks profit while communities such as theirs expe rien ce extreme eco-
nomic pover ty and dis-and under-investment in basic human needs. All this
will equip them with knowledge they will need as they become adults and
have to fight to maintain their place in the ne ighborhood, city, and coun try.
This, ultimately, is the goal of teaching (mathematics) for social justice-
tha t students become agents of social change and join in, and eventually
lead, the struggles to remake our world for peace and justice.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Although this article is single authored , the teaching, planning, assessment,

and analysis of the boundaries project in this story was collectively done
with tllree o the r people besides tile author: J oyce Sia ( teacher), Phi Pham
(teacher), a nd Pauicia Buenrostro (mathematics support staff) .
The research desc1ibed here was partially suppo rted by a grant from the
National Science Foundation to the Center for the Mathematics Education
of Latinos (No. ESI-0424983). The findings and opinions expressed here
a re those of the author and do not necessarily re flect the views of the fund-
ing agency.

NOTES

l. "We" refers to the school's two mathematics teachers (Ph i Pham and Joyce
Sia) and the other mathematics support staffperson (Patricia Buenrostro).
Together, we constituted the school "mathematics team."
2. In brief, generative themes a re key social con tradictions in people's lives and d1e
ways in which th ey understand them.

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