Critical teachers maintain that students should study the world around them, in
the process learning who they are and what has shaped them. In this context students
as odd as it might sound become epistemologically informed scholars. As
such, they are challenged to analyze and interpret data, conduct research, and
develop a love for scholarship that studies things that matter to the well being of the
people of the world. Critical middle school math teachers in this counter-hegemonic
context see their goals as cultivating a love for math, developing student interest in
discovering more and more uses for math in their lives, finding applications for
math that improve the lives of oppressed peoples, and producing a passion for
students to know more about the subject.