Pride & Math?

You maybe lost track of time, but it is June 2020.

Each year, we acknowledge the gay uprising that took place in June of 1969 in New York City.

Stonewall.

Some say Stonewall Riots.

Now we might better understand that one person’s riot is another’s uprising.

I want to talk about Stonewall, civil rights, and queer visibility with the mathematics education community. Of course, this is not a single mathematics education community.

There are the technophiles, the stats people, the mathematical modeling advocates, the back to basics skill and drillers, the critical mathematics radicals, the “better access to math will solve our problems” wishful thinkers, the Dan Meyer or Jo Boaler groupies (take your pick), the creative insubordination posse, and more.

There are schoolteachers, teacher educators, education researchers, mathematicians, principals, even mathematical artists.

And of course, I did not forget, there are all of the children who learn mathematics, some because they are forced to, and some because they care to.

But across most (maybe all?) of these spaces, the idea that being LGBT+ matters — for those who are learners and for those who are teachers — is not a talking-point. Even the standard lip-service…