By Shahid Muhammad. Amazon.com: “Intended for parents and teachers of African American students, this book provides strategies for correcting the racial achievement gap in upper-grade mathematics. Advice is provided on instilling confidence in African American students and on teaching math in a less sterile and theoretical way. Also explored is how critical thinking skills are essential in understanding math. A wealth of ideas is provided on creating relevant word problems to help students better understand basic math functions.”
Amazon.com reviews:
* Anybody can say they’ve written a book theses days because of self-publishing. This book in no way describes any special teaching techniques or even any math history to inspire black students. It has a few word problems with “African-American” names substituted for “Emily” and “Ethan.” Do NOT waste your money.
* The book combines questionable statements (Al Kharizmi is a black mathematician),wrong statements (“mathematics is prevalent in almost all careers and professions”), and mostly trivial statements (“teachers must …extinguish all negative verbal communications and interactions with the students”). Also you can find there derogatory generalizations about students (“youth occupy most of their free time watching television, listening to music,playing sports and games, or eating”)and teachers (“Educators are producing robots as opposed to thinkers”).Some advices suggested by the author are really funny,like the advice to college instructors to”have students develop songs, poems, sories, cartoons or rhymes on some math concept, pricipal,or skill”). What I couldn’t find in the book is the answer for the title question.
