The first statement that surprised me was the statement "Mathematics education in North America since 1990 has oscillated between two poles, each of which is associated with a political stance, a conception of what mathematics is, and a set of assumptions of the place of mathematics in society." It turns out that there are "left" and "right" wings in the educational system. The conservative math teaching really resonated with the experience I had growing up. I think the stereotype actually started from here. The dry and boring materials led people to think math is hard, cold, distant, and inhuman. I think changing the way of how teachers educate really could make a difference in the long-run.
The second part that surprised me was how there are three 20th century reform movements in mathematics education. From progressivist Reform to The New Math to Math Wars over the NCTM Standards. It seems like the math education has been going through a bumpy ride. People start realizing the importance of math and how math is the foundation of a lot of subjects!
Lastly, what shocked me was how social media is filled in everywhere in our daily life. It's sad to see that social media is now controlling our life including how we view the mathematic education system. In another class, we talked about how education was a tool for the government to control how the masses think and behavior which we all know that media is controlled by the government as well. It's kind of scary to think deeper on issues like that. What are we really learning and why we are learning it? I think students need to firstly learn how to think independently and critically!
Lovely writing, Zoe! Interesting historical reflections, and I agree about helping kids learn to be independent, critical thinkers.
ReplyDeleteIs three major movements over the course of a century really a lot? The world has changed so much since 1900, and personally I'm a bit surprised that we're still having the same sorts of conversations about math education that we were having back in the early 1900's with the progressive reform movement! I do agree that the amount of influence social media has over people's perception of math education is too big - there's a lot of people out there who don't really know what they're talking about, but now with social media they can let everybody know what they think about modern math education, which leads to misplaced outrage.
ReplyDeleteHi Zack, I guess three movements isn't really a lot in the sense that we've been through a lot revolutions including major ones like industrial revolution. Talking about that, I did just realize that there might be relationships between each revolutions. For example, industrial revolution resulted in the conservative stance of the educational system as the government needed more "repetitive labor".
DeleteAlso, I think part of math education is developing those critical thinking skills which allow people to ask those important questions.
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