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Robert Moses finally finds a moment to return a reporter's phone call on a hectic afternoon. He's standing outside a rural grocery store near Beaufort, South Carolina, getting ready to deliver a speech about equal opportunities for disadvantaged American kids. "It's all about organizing. It's always been that way," Moses, a recipient of a 1982 MacArthur "genius" award, says in a measured tone as he waits for his wife, Janet, to pick up a few supplies in the store. "And making sure that people's demands are consistently heard, whether it's the right to vote in the old days or the right to a quality education today."
Moses is 70 now, but his voice sounds as impassioned as ever. The Harlem-raised, Harvard-trained math educator first traveled to the South 44 years ago. As a field director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he risked his life several times to help register blacks to vote.
In 1964, Moses also helped plan what came to be known as Freedom Summer, when activists who included white Northerners and university students went to Mississippi to register rural black voters.
Milestone reforms that that effort sparked, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowed black Americans to enjoy rights that were promised under the Constitution. But entrenched poverty and other inequities have continued to occupy Moses. Although his field of operations has certainly changed, in some ways he has never left "the movement" at all.
When writer Bruce Watson visited him nearly a decade ago for Smithsonian, Moses was immersed in something he called the Algebra Project, an innovative initiative to teach math literacy to poor and minority students at the middle- and high-school levels in the rural South and the nation's inner cities. Seeking to redress the failures of many public schools, the project aimed to prepare students for college and future employment in a society where, Moses believes, proficiency in science and math are key to "successful citizenship." He has used everything from gumdrops to music and rides on the subway to make mathematics more fun and more accessible. By 1996, the project had reached some 45,000 pupils, and its instructional materials were being used by teachers in 105 schools across the country.
But over the past decade, Moses says, the nation's educational priorities have shifted to emphasize test results and teacher accountability, leaving approaches such as the Algebra Project strapped for funds. Its 2005 operating budget of roughly $1 million—from federal and private sources—is only about a quarter of what it was in 2000.
Today, Moses teaches classes in trigonometry and introductory engineering to 43 students at Lanier High School in Jackson, Mississippi. He wants his charges to enter college on an equal footing with their more advantaged peers.
"I do still think of it the same way I felt about the voting rights struggle," he says. "Back then, the common belief was that black sharecroppers weren't smart enough to vote and didn't care about voting. But that mind-set certainly changed when thousands of sharecroppers began to appear at the polls. Their demands helped force change. I think a similar strategy will succeed in education."
Comments
Dear Mr. Moses: Have you any suggestions for math projects and exhibits at children's museums? I am on a committee at the Louisiana Children's Museum in New Orleans. We want to build exhibits that will promote mathematical thinking, interest in math, and numeracy. Marcia Cooke
Posted by Marcia Cooke on December 7,2007 | 10:53 PM