About

The Du Bois Project helps all children, especially underrepresented minorities and children from low socioeconomic families achieve and maintain excellence in the Oberlin Public Schools by helping them enjoy math.

Math is fun for a child when she is able to solve a challenge that she did not expect to be able to solve. Fear of failure makes many children reluctant to dive fully into math challenges. Yet forcing children to tackle a challenge is difficult and won’t help them enjoy math. The Du Bois Project uses running and simple psychology to induce children to attack math challenges. By presenting challenges that are at their level and offering praise when they complete a challenge, we make math fun for them and start a virtuous cycle of accomplishment -> satisfaction and self confidence -> harder challenges -> greater accomplishment.

The Oberlin Du Bois Project is named after W.E.B. Du Bois. Raised by a single mom of limited means, he was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. W.E.B. pronounced his name “Du Boys” and that is how we pronounce ours.