I really liked how this article was like a brief history of mathematics education throughout the 20th century. Starting with the Progressivist Movement led by John Dewey from 1910-1940, New Math reform movement of the 1960s, and present-day Math Wars. Dewey advocated for a shift in math education where students should form and test hypotheses and perceive patterns and relationships through experimentation, inquiry and interpretation. Dewey is a very influential person and strong advocate for educational reform. Dewey challenged the system of impractical solutions derived from complicated steps to solving math problems. Another moment that made me stop during reading was through the introduction of the Bourbaki math group. They were a secret-invite only group of French-mathematicians publishing work under the pseudonym Nicholas Bourbaki. They published mathematical textbooks and introduced new math notations. I thought it was funny that there existed a secret group of mathematicians in which entry was invite only; like a superhero organization. The last section that made me stop was on the discussion of New Math. New Math was introduced following the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik in the great space race. The goal of New Math was to introduce abstract concepts earlier from K-12 so that students can develop into rocket scientists and engineers to help US win the space race. Teachers and parents who learned math previously did not understand New Math and was not able to teach it effectively. New Math was highly conservative and reflects traditional university style teaching such as lecturing, presentations, favouring deductive methods and viewed math as infallible. This reminded me of the scene from the movie Incredibles 2, where Bob was trying to teach Dash “new math” and was getting frustrated questioning, “why would they change math? Math is math.”
Paper:
Gerofsky, S. 2008. Mathematics Education. Battleground Schools Volume 2 (L-Z). Greenwood Press. Westport, Connecticut, London. Pp. 391-400
Movie Scenes. 2018.
Incredibles 2 – ‘Math is Math’ Scene. Retrieved September 29, 2020 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QtRK7Y2pPU.
I like how you focused on the elitism side of math. I do believe that this has been a problem in math and still exists today: that only a few chosen ones can achieve this feat. Or, perhaps, it can be interpreted that only the chosen few can contribute to science. Seems to me it's a lot of ego issues :).
ReplyDeleteYes definitely, there is that 'elitist' view with math I would like to try and change as an educator. One way would be to make math fun and interesting for students pairing it with positive reinforcement so they do not feel discouraged or scared at the difficulty of math.
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