The Magic of Math

In lecture today, we had this really interesting woman come in and talk about math. I actually enjoyed math for the most part in elementary through jr. high and high school. I was good at math, mental math, algebra, and factoring. For me, it made sense because I come from a family of people who loves science, math, and computers. She spoke about the disconnect between the abilities of young children and the concepts we try to teach in schools.

She touched on a reading by Leroy Little Bear which talks about the social standard that colonialism creates which causes discrimination and oppression. Lots of this is present in the education system and the way we teach children. A personal example from my schooling is when I was in jr. high and I was in my seventh-grade math class. In elementary school, I didn’t have much exposure to multiple choice exams, lots of the evaluations were written responses. Moving into jr. high something I had to get used to was multiple choice exams becoming over half the format of my exams, and not surprisingly, I totally failed the multiple choice part and got 100% on the written part. Due to the difference in weight of each part of the exam had I still had a very low grade in the class. I had no idea what was going on, had I just lost all my math skills or was the things we were learning just too hard? Neither. I was forced to conform to the type of exam-style that was easy for teachers to grade. It is faster to feed 30 exams into a scantron machine than to grade those 30 exams if they were all written. For that entire school year, my self-esteem hit rock bottom (partly due to my being 13, but the drop in my grades also affected me).  Looking back as a university student becoming a teacher, I don’t know why my math teacher couldn’t be more accommodating. I had issues later in school in grade 12 with test anxiety where I would completely blank on math exams, which were primarily multiple choice. I wasn’t able to gain my confidence in math back until I upgraded my grades after high school and I was given exams that did have any multiple choice questions on it. I could have developed more mathematical confidence and begin changing the stereotype where everyone hates math if the teachers I had were more open to considering different ways of testing students.

Another article that was assigned for reading this week was by Louise Poirier called “Teaching Mathematics and the Inuit Community”. This article talks about a study where Inuit students in a community in Quebec were taught mathematics in their first language, Inuktitut, until the third grade then they switch to either French or English. Within the Inuktitut language, there are a few ways in which the mathematics of the Inuit challenge the mathematics ideas of Europe. The Inuit’s numbering system is very different from that of the European in that the Inuit have a base 20 numeric system why the Europeans have a base 10 numeric system. Looking at the difference int he cultures it makes sense that the Inuit people would have a base 20 numeric system. The example given by the speaker in today’s lecture was that igloos are very hot so much of the time when there are lots of people in the igloos it is too hot for things like shoes or clothes. When they would sit at the fire to keep warm, they would sit with their legs stretched out in front of them with their toes pointing up. Taking into count that their hands and feet were visible, the base 20 system makes sense. They saw all their fingers and toes and the sum added to 20. In European culture, one’s feet are most often covered, so what is left is the 10 fingers on their hands to count with. Another cultural difference between the Inuit and Europeans is that the Inuit had an oral culture, the Europeans had a written culture. The Inuit mainly relied on oral reteaching to pass on information, while the Europeans relied on the written word to pass on information. The third way that the Inuit challenged the European mathematics system is that the Inuit had three different identifiers for numbers like the number 3 depending on the context. For example, there is a separate identifier for three things inside something, three things, and groups of three. The Inuit numeric system, like much of the culture of the indigenous people, was disregarded as not making sense to the Europeans and therefore it was less valid.

I have had an up and down relationship with math, even though I change my minor from math to English, I still would love to teach a math class when I am a teacher. If I do become a math teacher, I want to take the information I was taught today and put it to good use. I hope to change at least one person’s ideas about math so there can be the start of some change in the stereotype of everyone hating math.

As a teacher would you change the way you write your exams if there were students who would do better with a different type of exam or would you encourage them to adapt to the new type of tests in your class?