On June 6 NCSCE hosted a screening of the film Counted out: Math is Power. The film investigates the biggest crises of our time—political polarization, racial and economic inequity, global pandemic and climate change–through an unexpected lens: math. From the Director’s (Vicki Abeles) statement:
I learned that a film about the way math is taught—and how we
learn it—ends up being a film about so much more than classrooms. It’s about who is
encouraged and supported on the journey to math literacy, and who drops out of the math
pipeline. It’s about why some of us learn early to distance ourselves from math fields, unwittingly
closing off doors of opportunity to hundreds of exciting careers in science, engineering,
technology, medicine, and media. It’s about how math forms the scaffolding that supports our
institutions. It’s about math’s critical role in (literally) holding up our infrastructure and cities, and
about its impact on our electoral process, news ecosystem, dating sites, social media feeds,
housing market, and prisons.
Ultimately it’s a film that poses a question fundamental to democracy: if we can’t understand a
system that governs us, how much power do we actually have?
The post-screening conversation was lively, thought-provoking, and indicated strong interest in further programming on numeracy, quantitative literacy, and inclusive pedagogy. NCSCE is working with the film’s producers to schedule another screening, date TBA, for those who missed the first one, and will be developing a symposium on ways that educators can expand the math components of their civically relevant STEM curricula.