What is Mathematics? For me, Mathematics is the way we express our trust in the universe. Every time we use numbers to express the happenings in the world around us, we are declaring “Yes universe, I believe that you make sense.”
I’m going to talk a bit about what I call “Mathematical sense”. I see so many students in schools that simply don’t have it. They add together 2 numbers and get a number smaller than either. They count …97, 98, 99,100, 200, 300… For them, and the numbers have no meaning to them. They represent nothing, except a lot of wasted time, trying to reach some unknown goal along this dark unknown path that their teacher is trying to push them along. Mathematical sense is the art of knowing, of feeling, that when we are solving mathematical problems, we are not just shifting around numbers because the teacher told us to, but that something deeper is coming into play, something powerful, something that is fundamentally true and right.
Personally, I like working through lots of examples in Mathematics. The more I play with numbers, the more develop my mathematical model of the world – my knowledge of how numbers are supposed to work. I think too often we push students straight to the more difficult questions, the ones that will challenge them and “stretch” their knowledge or understanding, without allowing them proper time to get really comfortable with the material.
I think that also, too many of our public school teachers hated math in school and consequently hate to teach it. Our children are taught from a very young age that Math is boring, difficult, nerdy and completely detached from real life. Far too often I have heard statements such as “I’m sorry class, you’re not behaving, so we’ll just have to do Math sheets instead of our colouring”. An effective bribe, but one that places Math firmly in the undesirable category. We have developed a culture where Math is not respected as it should be.
I cannot think of one person who would stand out in public, give a small burst of apologetic laughter and say “Sorry, I’m just not any good at reading”. So then do we hear the same thing about Math every day? Why are people so proud of their mathematical inability? Why is it socially acceptable, desirable even, to declare a complete revulsion of numbers! Rise up Flatlanders! Rise out of obscurity and the shout to the world “Hurrah! I Love Math and my world is beautiful!”. My dear Flatlanders, lets go out and teach them.
Much love,
Emily the circle
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I agree with what you said about not forcing the hard problems on the students but i also think that these problems do effectively "stretch" students' brains. Maybe instead of not doing the hard problems first, the teacher could walk through the difficult problem with the class to show the effective end result that can be achieved by using the simple steps that they are about to teach..catch the students interest, show them the importance!
ReplyDeleteI love what you said about math spoken about almost derogatorily. I have never thought about that before, but why do teachers use math as a punishment? That's just giving the subject a bad rep. For me it was never a problem because I liked math more than coloring...but i realize I'm one of a very small selection of the math lovers.
I have always believed that mathematics makes sense. Once in high school, a friend told me how she liked English so much more than math, because in English, there were rules that you could follow and they always worked, whereas in math, the rules didn't make sense and there were always exceptions. My jaw nearly hit the ground. I always thought it was the other way around.
ReplyDeleteI have also found that many people do not have what you call mathematical sense. Why do you think that is? Is mathematical sense something innate? Can a person develop mathematical sense? Why do you have it when so many other people don't?
The fact that public schools give math such a bad reputation is a huge concern for most of us that enjoy it. However sometimes I feel like public schools do more damage by ruining students who enjoy math and understand it by not always giving them the opportunity to advance but rather leaving them to their boredom while waiting for the rest of the class to catch up.
ReplyDeleteI can't even express how appreciative I am knowing that I'm not the only one who enjoys math. I've never understood why everyone finds it socially acceptable to hate math. I hate having to explain why I'm majoring in mathed everytime I meet someone new.