Connecting Math to Our Lives Data Collection Activity 3: "The Wages We Earn" and Data Collection Activity 4: "The Real Costs" 2001-2002 Observations, Comments and Questions from Students   New York, New York, U.S.A.: Data Collection Activity 3: "The Wages we Earn" from 6th grade students (11 - 12 years old) Aqil, Erick, Angel, Chifon, Christopher, Keke, Cynthia and Joseph. Teachers: Beatriz Font and Erin Turner. Dear Connecting Math Classes: From Crossroads Middle School, New York City (from Aqil, Erick, Angel, Chifon, Christopher, Keke, Cynthia and Joseph) To get the information for the Data Collecting Activity "What do we earn", we decided to get the information about how much people earn from the Census website. http://www.census.gov On the website they show how much people earn and they show it by different races and by different genders. We decided to send you the information about different races and different sexes so that you could compare them. It shows that black people and white people and hispanic people do not earn the same amounts for doing the same job. We wanted to give you all the numbers so that you could see the differences. (See the table for our findings) Here are some more questions that we have. We would really like other classes to tell us what they think. Ideas about men and women We noticed that in our country men seem to make more money than women. Like in the WNBA (that is for women basketball players) we figured out that it would take a woman 54 years to make what the men in the NBA make in just 1 year. We think this is not right because women can do the same things as men. We think it should not be sexist but instead it should be equal. People think that just because you are a girl you can't do some things and we don't agree. We think the men might get paid more because the NBA is a lot more popular and it has been around for a long time. But still we think that the women should not get treated so badly and they should not get paid less because they are all superstars. Ideas about the different races We think that it is not fair that in certain jobs, well really mostly on the list you see that a lot of white people make more than any other race. African Americans don't get paid fairly. Like the African American male doctor makes about $90,000 less than a white male doctor. We think it is unfair - I (Keke) am thinking about being a doctor and I see that a white male makes a lot of money and a black male and a black female makes a whole lot less than that. Hispanic males are in between. As we were looking at the data from the website we noticed how blacks and Latinos are not making that much. Sometimes they make the lowest prices. The only one making money is the black males in the NBA. In all the other jobs we think they work really hard but they still get pushed down every time they try by somebody who is paying them less. We think is not fair that the white people get paid more than any other race and we are not sure why that is but we think it probably has to do with the slavery time. There is not really slavery any more but we think that in a way there is still slavery because some people do not get paid very much and sometimes white people still treat black people like they are worthless. If slavery would start again people wouldn't listen. We have the power to speak out. Ideas about what we can do We also think that we should do something about this and we are going to talk more in our class about that. We want to know if other countries have these same kinds of differences in what people earn? And we also want to know what other kids think we could do about this because it is not fair? Thank you! Crossroads Students New York City   INDIA (State of Maharastra): Data Collection Activity 4 from teachers Ragini Salvi, Hema Motling and Mona Patrao and their students (ages 10-13) at Redstone Learning Resource Centre in Bhose Village, India. Dear all, This is the data for the 4th assignment from the Redstone Centre India. The differences in wages were a very good indication of the social inequalities in our society. Here is what we have found: The average number of hours worked per week depends on the individual. There is no standard as such.We have taken forty-two hours per week for all three groups. The average wage per hour: Farm worker or factory worker earns Rs 12 per hour A secondary school teacher, and Rs 21 per hour A medical doctor earns Rs 250 per hour The total for the shopping list is Rs 4719 A farm worker will need to work for 393 hours to earn Rs 4719 A teacher will need to work 224 hours to earn Rs 4719 A doctor will need to work 18 hours to earn Rs 4719 Looking forward to comparing this with data from other countries Warm regards, Mona India.   RUSSIA: Data collection activity 3 (more information about differences in wages) from math teacher Yuri Chigrin and the students (age 13-17) from the Lyceum #2, in Irkutsk, Russia.   Dear Kristin, this is letter from Masha with new data she collected. *************************************************************** Yes, there are people in Russia who earn much more than factory worker, teacher and doctor. There are also people who earn much less. Usually here in Russia we calculate income per month: (Incomes are listed in USD because RR are not so well-known in the world.) Neurosurgeon $600 Economist $83 Advertising agent $96 Manager $216 Director $400 Programmer $83 Postman $33 Militiaman (=policeman) $83 Automechanic $166 Painter $50 Cleaner $33 Employer $400 Seller $100 Driver $166 We don't mean people who are "sitting on a tube" (i.e. who are connected to the oil and gas). Their income may be incalculable :-) ********************************************************************** Yuri Chigrin