This small beginning multiplied into a movement in which his daughter's math teacher, the rest of the students and other parents became involved. At the teacher’s request, he worked with a small group of students. While his daughter was proficient in the math being taught at school, he felt what she was learning was inadequate to prepare her for her future. Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As often happens, the concept for The Algebra Project, which he founded to promote math literacy, grew out of a volunteer experience, in this case in his oldest daughter’s middle school class in the Open Program of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Just like speaking a native language helps you to understand the people who speak it and find your way around a foreign country, so does the knowledge of a symbolic mathematical language help students to navigate the culture and terrain of computer technology, and algebra is the language in which students learn to manipulate these abstract symbols.Īs a concerned parent and impassioned middle school mathematics teacher, first in New York and then in Tanzania, East Africa, Bob Moses speaks from experience. Since the information highway has been paved with revolutionary advances in computer technology, and these indispensable tools are powered by mathematical symbolic languages, students need to become literate in math, the “hidden culture” of computers. Why algebra? Moses strongly believes that for an individual to succeed in the 21st century, he or she must be proficient in math and science.

To Bob Moses, it is all about removing barriers to learning, so disadvantaged youth can take advantage of new technologies and economic opportunity to experience workforce equality. He wholeheartedly embraces the educational concept that all children can learn and that all children deserve the best education they can receive. An activist since the 1960s when he demanded political access for African-Americans by organizing voter registration drives in the South, Bob Moses focuses today on another fundamental civil right – economic access defined by math literacy.

What is the common denominator between civil rights and algebra? The answer to the equation can be found in the name of one man, Robert Moses.

Radical Equations by Robert P. Moses