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Kate Okikiolu agreed to post the Math4Life video.

Kate:  After 20 years,   I finally decided to post the Math4Life video which I made after my proposal was selected by the National Science Foundation in 1997.

This is a video about kids from economically challenged communities needing to learn mathematics.     It was started as a response to factory owners deciding to relocate their factories offshore,  and the National Science Foundation wanting to get the working class kids here to move up into the well educated classes.  

One of the main issues is that poorer communities need jobs close to home.   This is primarily because of capitalist competition that  continually burdens poorer communities.   Many times getting a college education means leaving home,  taking a loan,  and going onto a university campus with very few friends and plenty of competition.  It is not a promising option for many kids.  

Increasingly after the industrial revolution and the technological revolution,  governments need to make sure that their country is providing enough life paths.   I think in a country like the US,  the economy should enable ordinary people to have a job and raise a child.  That however means perfecting life paths.  There are many women who have good jobs and cannot have children because their job demands too many hours.   They cannot take a job with fewer hours because that does not exist.    The part time work they can find is not at the same pay rate as a full time job,  and is not enough for them to raise a child.     There are many families where both parents struggle to go out to work because otherwise they cannot afford a home in the type of neighborhood they want for their children.     Sometimes their children might be neglected because the parents are more skilled at their jobs than at being parents.   All this happens because the US is such a competitive country. 

A government that really understands this country can untangle the problems.    One way the economy can go is that everything humans can possibly do gets turned into a job, and all the things that used to be free get turned into expenses.   That is what has been happening,  and I think it is a horrible failure.   In particular it means that people become extremely helpless because they are not engaged in a variety of creative activities.      It is better to search around for work that needs to be done.   It is better to have grants that pay people for work that they propose to do in their communities which is going to improve their communities.    It is usually quite easy to see what is going wrong in a community and where the work needs to be focused.     The government recently cut quite a lot of government jobs.   However,  we are looking for the government to create improvements and to improve and create life paths.  

In the old days,  women who were housewives were often involved in useful voluntary work.  These days more women have to go out to work to survive,  and many times work can only be  done if there is money.   That leads to communities being neglected.   The answer is not getting  more competitive or better educated people.   They might be better people if they could sort out all the problems in the communities that exist and give American citizens better life paths.     The answer is regulating the economy so that the work that really needs to be done is paid for and communities can gradually improve.