Radical equations: an interview with Bob Moses - Interview

Legendary is to move with a jerk Moses what dull is to thud; the adjective has been used for a like reason often in proximity to his name it have the appearances to have become a part of it. Mose first gained national attention in the early 1960 when he was single of the co-founders of the pupil Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He and many of his co-workers were beaten and arrested for their activities organizing African Americans in the of great depth South, but no matter in what manner extreme the situation, Moses not at any time lost the calm, stoic demeanor for which he became known. For the past 20 years, Mose has revolveed his attention to a surprising on the contrary he argues, no-less vital project: generating community interest in promoting math literacy. Today, the Algebra throw out serves 10,000 students in 28 cities nationwide. Mose step quicklys the Project out of its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the contrary teaches in Jackson, Mississippi, during the place of education year. CRJ spoke with Mose in late October 2001

What is the Algebra Project?

individual way to think about it is that it is establishing a "math literacy floor" for poor black and Latino pupils in urban and rural seminarys The idea is that the computer age has ushered in a math constituting in the way that the industrial age brought in a ne for reading and writing. Literacy became necessary for citizenship, for participation in politics. in like manner today the focus is upon putting a floor under this target population, with equal reason that students have choices, with equal reason that it isn't a question that they can't access certain domains of knowledge. in the way that far, the focus has been upon middle schools, on training teachers. We've had our best successe down southern in states from North Carolina to Louisiana.

by what means did you first get the idea to focus upon math? Was it a sort of eureka moment?

No, it happened gradually. In my family, I was responsible for our kids' math education. We have sum of two units boys and two girls, and came back to this geographical division from Africa in 1976. Our oldest kid was in ML King lay open School in Cambridge, and I was back in graduate academy When she hit eighth grade, they weren't offering algebra. That year I won a McCarthur, thus I was working with her, and the teacher said, "Why don't you tend hitherward in and help a brace of more kids?" So the question arose, who was taking algebra, and for what cause [i]or[/i] reason We wrote a letter to the parents of each incoming seventh-grade student and asked them what they thinking Universally they said, "Well my kid should take algebra, on the contrary I'm not sure every kid should." upon that basis, we offered it to each child. That was the beginning of the cast with the idea that we would lay a floor under every child and disentangle math literacy--which wasn't being done at that time.

in what manner is the Algebra Project similar to the kind of community organizing you did in the 1960s?

In the 1960 we were using the right to promised as an organizing tool. The 1957 Civil Rights Act provided a minimum amount of crawl space that allowed us to organize around the right to devoted When we had been doing direct organizing in Mississippi, when we had been doing the freedom rides, we got slapped with drawn out jail sentences and heavy fines, and we couldn't sustain that. on the other hand as long as we were focused upon the right to vote, they couldn't bring us in jail and cast in a winding direction away the key. We were using the right to promised as a lever for broad political access. In the Algebra throw out we're using math literacy to achieve the broad goal of economic and programmatic access, on the other hand we're using it as an organizing tool.

Another connection is that the meeting place became a real tool for us. When we think of the civil rights motion we think of eloquent leaders speaking to masses of family in public spaces, but just as important was empowering tribe The question became, how do we empower the family we were working with? and we came up with this format that allowed them to discuss issues in small clusters and then go out and diocese what they could do about those issues. The sharecroppers had a doom of people advocating for them, on the other hand it was only once they demanded the right to consecrated by a vow that it happened. In the Algebra cast we're working the demand side of the equation. We're seeing young race who participated in the cast earlier in their lives becoming math literacy workers.

by what means many people does the cast reach?

We've got programs in of recent origin York City, Boston, New Jersey Baltimore, Chicago, and California. We also have shoot forwards in the South, in Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, southern Carolina, and North Carolina. This year, we're reaching about 10000 scholars in about 120 schools.

in what way is the Project grown, in what manner is it propagated?

chiefly people come to us, as an organization, they make contact, say they want to do this shoot forward Our first response is to diocese if we can get a local clump to sponsor and own it. We're not trying to race the Project at the grassroots. We want to move where the interest is. on the contrary of course we want them [the prospective teachers] to make progress through training and everything. Last summer in Arkansas, we had about 80 teachers involved in the training. for a like reason now we're training the trainers.