Mario Benabe is an Ethno-mathematician, public intellectual, author, school leader, social justice activist and creator of Do-The-Right-Thing-Pedagogy, a framework for teaching and learning that decolonizes STEM education.
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El Paso, Texas
“Our work begins and ends when we dismantle the ritualized humiliation of children.” — Mario Benabe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
“I created this framework to intersect culturally sustaining pedagogy, critical pedagogy and indigenous knowledge systems. By looking deeper into the immense complexity of the scientific brilliance of our ancestors we can inform ourselves that we belong in this field of study and we don’t have to fear math or science because it is in our blood.”
— Mario Benabe
Bronx, NY
“There is still hope because there are still children.” — Mario Benabe
New York, NY
“My intentions are to expand our inventory of ideas around STEM education in the profession so that it is culturally and linguistically integrated and rooted in a decolonial approach to conjure up in our students a nostalgia towards reclaiming our ancestral mathematical and scientific mind. For educational professionals this work has been far more innovative because it adds a critical layer that is missing— culture. My work in STEM education is about going back to our old ways, where we were far more restorative than destructive.”
— Mario Benabe
Bronx, NY
“We have to decide as a nation what world do we ultimately want our children to develop in. Until then there is scarcely any hope.”
— Mario Benabe
Harlem, NY
“I teach because it is my greatest form of protest” — Mario Benabe
Albuquerque, New Mexico
“Recently we revived the Incas’ quipu and yupana, two mathematical tools that allow for us to calculate with a great degree of accuracy statistics, and arithmetic into the hundreds of millions by using a wooden board divided into a matrix and corn, beans and other natural material to do the calculations.”
— Mario Benabe