A few weeks into the semester doing my lesson on mathematicians and talking about different limitations on math, students will be doing projects. Each student will be given the choice of any mathematician they know about (and where to look if they have no idea) and told to develop a report on one to present back to the class, but also about themselves and why they picked the person.
Islamic culture plays a huge part in the development of many key ideas in the mathematical world, and so instead of doing a specific mathematician for her report, one of the students in the class, in private, asked if she could do hers on the role of Islamic culture as a whole. Thrilled that a student knew about this influence, I tell her to go for it and that I'll be looking forward to the presentation. Days go by and presentations roll around, and of course all the students do work at their expected levels and inform their peers about all sorts of important mathematicians. Then near the end of the list comes the presentation on Islamic Scholars and their influence. The presentation starts out fine until actually getting to the Islam part at which one of the more rambunctious students starts making comments to his friends about the scholars' intelligence, and even going so far as to link these maths to terrorist situations. Having held strong through most of the remarks this last bit is too much and the girl flees from the room in tears at their remarks (which unfortunately kept up even with quiet threats of punishments). All this before she reaches her conclusion and reflective statement of why she picked the mathematician. Before heading into the hallway to check on her, I pick up her and notes and realize the reason for her breakdown. Her reasoning, unknown to all of us, was that she is actually Islamic herself and up till that point had actually been proud of her heritage and its influence in such an important field.
3 comments:
This is a great "teachable moment". I would think that it would be a good idea to talk to the girl and maybe have her lead a class discussion or do a powerpoint on what her culture really is. Maybe she could tell them about her family. But all this only after giving the class a lecture on how all of them have different cultures and why it isn't right to judge a person by where they come from instead of who they are.
Obviously race is a sensitive issue, and hopefull the anti-Islamic madness in this country will die down in a few years, but this is a perfectly valid fear. I think one way to soothe the student's concerns is to teach a lesson on the Islamic contibutions to Mathematics yourself. That might also silence one or two of the outspoken mini-bigots.
I would ask the female student if she would mind enlighting her ignorant classmate, and if she did not, they both would do a presentation to the class on Islamic culture. Since it is a little more work, I'd offer to help them out a lot. By pairing the two together, they can work out their differences and show the class that people who are orginally very different can work together.
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