The Mother of All NCTM Addresses

This month’s column is short, but I am asking you to set aside 51 minutes and 36 seconds to watch the embedded video. It is a recording of the Iris M. Carl Equity Address given on Friday April 19 at this year’s NCTM Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado. The title of the talk is “Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize” and the speaker is Uri Treisman, professor of mathematics and of public affairs, and director of the Charles A. Dana Center, at the University of Texas at Austin.

I was not able to be at NCTM, but on the recommendation of several colleagues, I watched the YouTube video. I simply cannot write a column on mathematics or mathematics education in the same month as Treisman’s immensely more important, profound—and powerfully articulated—words became part of mathematics education history. As a community, we now have our own “I have a dream” speech. Thank you, Uri.

PDFs of Treisman's presentation slides are available here.