Rural Mathematics Education Are you joking? M 2 Rural Workshop, Lincoln NE

NO. Why not? 60% 40% 30%

Boor… Clown… Rude… ? What do these words mean? Yep. Rural. Jokers for 500 years. We’re not joking any more.

Besides liking rural people and ways of living, we think… Math is useful and beautiful. Rural people need math… The rural world needs its people to think mathematically (& not just do arithmetic).

What is ACCLAIM? 6 universities collaborating on… a math ed doctorate, research, and teacher development. Mission: building “indigenous leadership capacity” to improve rural mathematics education.

Indigenous leadership capacity … …hmm. an extremely dangerous idea… As in… Government of, by, and for the people.

That’s cute… But where’s the math with all this concern for ‘community’? You might even say, “Community’s not our job!!”

Oh yeah?? Rural educators are people from the local community; the rest of the world is clueless about this fact. They and their schools are staying put. That’s a fact and a commitment in most rural communities… despite the difficulties, which have always been great, but not insurmountable.

At ACCLAIM, we’re trying to do mathematics education in a rural way. Nobody has done this before, not on this scale (doc program, research, teacher development). We find it helpful to ask questions first, because… 1.questions logically precede answers; so, you see… 2.answers that precede questions are… 3.called “assumptions” & are very easy to give… 4.saving “everyone” a lot of trouble. 5.Except the victims, 6.who continue to “enjoy” additional trouble with each additional unexamined assumption, world without end. 7.Rural people and rural communities are the victims in this case. 8.Them R Us. That’s part of the reason we care to do this work.

Why are questions about “rural math education” so important? 1.Questions might actually help us rural people, about whose stupidity there is literally so little question. 2.Questions, however, bring up difficulties. 3.For instance: “rural mathematics education” might not be mostly about doing more of “the best” in rural places. (This strange thought is news to some people.) 4.It might also mean doing new things, doing “best” things very differently, and even thinking differently about math education in rural places. 5.Of course, at ACCLAIM we think it does entail all this. 6.We’re not against doing things better. Of course not.

OK, w hat questions did we ask and what did we learn? What are the uniquely rural challenges of math education? Is good teaching (‘best practice’) the same everywhere? Where do rural place and community fit in? What do rural adults think about math & math education? What’s the impact of math education reform in rural places? First, the questions (they seem pretty reasonable…):

What have we learned so far? The simple answer to all these rather unimaginative questions is almost exactly the same: No one really knows; no one’s asked. The informative answers are not, of course, so simple. We’ll be looking at the first two questions, just to confuse things. (1. good teaching the same everywhere?; 2. uniquely rural challenges??) You yourself may think that good teaching really is the same everywhere. Many people do. We have come to think otherwise. A professor is someone who “thinks otherwise.” Hi. I’m Craig and I will be your professor.

Take that question: “Don’t we just need to do more best practice in rural schools?” Even Harvard, bless its heart, needs better teaching. Get with the program, already; what’s your problem at ACCLAIM? At ACCLAIM, our problem is that we wonder about things… ** Is “best practice” best universally? (Even in rural? To what extent?) ** What about the mathematics knowledge export business—rural youth outmigration? (remember… indigenous capacity) ** What about the economics and geography of teacher supply and demand (as in “highly-qualified teacher”)? We doubt the claim that one size fits all.

Really: Don’t we just need to do it? (As in “Don’t we just need to do more best practice in rural schools?”) “Don’t we just…” makes improvement a matter of following doctor’s orders. Get the prescription filled already! This way we at least know what to blame when reform fails: those rude people just didn’t take their medicine.

We hear that “just” a lot. It means: go away with your rural nonsense. At ACCLAIM we are working to help each other and our colleagues think twice about rural places and ask some difficult questions for a change. It’s not something we’re “just doing.” There will be successes and failures. It’s risky business. Not everyone will approve. That’s exactly why we’re doing this work.

Everyone has a theory of rural, when pressed. It’s mostly the same theory. The deficit theory. This theory maintains that rural people, rural life, rural community, rural ways of doing things, and rural knowledge are … basically inadequate. At the very least, rural isn’t up-to-date. Next, we turn our other question: “uniquely rural challenges?”

It’s a theory with a long history. The theory is seldom actually argued out loud. It’s… … insidious (hard to recognize and to repudiate) … invidious (promotes envy in hard-to-recognize ways) … ubiquitous (it’s everywhere…for instance in the idea of public schooling as charity: Deficit theories don’t apply to private schools—instead we have theories about their superiority!)

We have lots of connections with rural people and communities, and we don’t see the evidence that supports the deficit theory, not generally. Our work confronts (and thereby tends to repudiate) the deficit theory of rural existence. It’s lonely work. We’re glad to have company.

All these inadequate answers to inadequate questions are to be expected in a new field. They should be welcomed in all their inadequacy. They fruitfully lead to better questions and better answers. We call the work of answering questions “research” and we call the outcome of the research, “progress.” ACCLAIM now has exactly 48 better questions.

Please help! People can get small grants from us to work on these or any closely related questions. Masters students can do this in some form too. “Research” isn’t just for researchers. (Some restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. See package for details.) I have other questions for our panelists, however, if they choose to accept them.

Questions for Panelists… What unique features of Nebraska’s rural schools and communities might already be improving mathematics teaching and learning? Employers look at the quality of schools when deciding where to locate factories. On these terms, closing its school stacks the decks against a community. Why is this considered acceptable? Without calculus (in particular), the high school math curriculum is typically regarded as inadequate. What are the implications and the alternatives for rural schools?

Rural Mathematics Education: We’re not joking. END