Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathematics

How will I make my class a place where students learn to be a democratic citizen?

I think that, as teachers, we usually lose focus on what our real goal in the classroom is. We are not there to throw knowledge to the students and then assign them grades according to how much they get. Our job is to help them understand the world around them, and how they as students can affect that world. In other words, how they can use what they learn in school to go out and affect their families, their own and other communities, their country and the global community.
In my class I will make sure to have discussions taking place. I think that students need to be able to explain their understandings to the rest of the class so that they learn to make, and at the same time understand, political statements and arguments.
I will also try to incorporate current events into the classroom and show them with a mathematics perspective. For example, we can discuss the current unemployment rate and make arguments on what does this mean and make predictions as to what would happen if it grows or decreases.
I will try to encourage students to build arguments, but in a respectful manner. They need to be able to listen to other students’ opinions and enrich and form one of their own. I will value critical thinking, more so than just getting the "right answer." I will focus on the "how" and the "why." I will emphasize that mathematics is not about totality where an answer is either wrong or right because that would translate into their own minds as if they were able to think right or wrong.