Chynah Tyler, member of the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, more commonly known by its informal name, the Massachusetts State Legislature, has published a fine article in Commonwealth Magazine. You should read it—not just because Chynah is a former Crimson Summer Academy (CSA) student of mine, but because it has some important ideas.

The two-summer course that I taught to Chynah—and continue to teach to 32 inner-city kids every summer—is called Quantitative Reasoning. Basically an interdisciplinary applied-math class, it includes a significant unit on the mathematics of voting and elections (more or less what is commonly called Civics, but with a mathematical slant). In her article Chynah focuses on young voters, beginning with these sentences:

THE 2022 MIDTERM elections saw the second-highest youth turnout for an election in more than 30 years, with 27 percent of citizens aged 18-29 casting a ballot…. The rise in youth turnout upended the long-held narrative that young people don’t vote because they are either apathetic or feel powerless. Indeed, young people are becoming more empowered to engage.

Anyway, that’s just the beginning. Read the rest of the article. It’s quite short and won’t take up much of your time.

Categories: Life, Teaching & Learning