What is mathematics? What is the goal of mathematics education? What is the role of "teacher" in this framework? All of these questions are at the forefront of "Battleground Schools." And I was shocked to find out that people have been asking these same three questions for over 100 years. How has so much time passed and so little has changed? This is a similar frustration people experience with the 2-party system in America (and what amounts to a 2-party system in Canada), which is no coincidence. Schools have always been permeated by sociopolitical agendas; therefore, they are subject to the pendulum swings of the conservative-liberal spectrum.
As a teacher candidate in both Math and History, I was intrigued by the Cold War implications on Math curricula because it highlights how schools become ground zero for implementing desired sociopolitical outcomes. Losing the "space race" means we need more rocket scientists, which means we need more people adept in math and science, which means we need to adapt K-12 curricula to reflect this desired outcome. From a socially constructed problem, comes an educationally constructed solution. The ultimate irony of this is that conservatively-minded math reformists were now making a case that anyone could become a rocket scientist. I got a good laugh out of this contrast.
I'd also be interested to see how the math-phobic views commonly held by North Americans interacted with this Cold War call to action for more mathematicians and scientists. I would bet that these sentiments were a significant factor in the campaign success of the "back to basics" curriculum proposed by Reagen. But I ask the proverbial question, which came first: the chicken or the egg? Did math-phobic sentiments push people towards a math defined as objective authoritative and inflexible, or did the back-to-basics curriculum inform ideas about math as a "hard, cold, distant, and inhuman" (Gerofsky, 393) subject? How does the desire for standardization interact with the goal of "teacher-proofing" math classrooms? All these questions and more are circulating in my head as we enter discussion this week.
How do you think we can balance the need for standardization in math education while avoiding the reinforcement of negative perceptions of math as "cold" and "distant"?
ReplyDeleteOverall, I think math is over-standardized. I think there is too much emphasis on topics rather than skills. Of course, multiplication is a necessary skill, but so is reasoned estimate and defending your answers, which have been historically devalued because they're not "exact." For example, I can imagine a math class where the final assessment is a project and has students thinking mathematically and developing real world connections. In that way, math becomes more personal and tangible.
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