October 2 - Battleground Schools

 

 Upon reading this article, I realized that we have been fighting for the same things in mathematics education for a century. I was surprised to read that John Dewey's movement came before the New Math movement and it made me stop and think about how Dewey's recommendations were never accepted in a wholesale fashion across North America but it did not take as much effort for people, not just in North America, but worldwide, adopted the New Math curricula in fear of being left behind. This was especially surprising to me as the article mentions that "Far too often, the jet-setting curriculum developers showed little regard for local conditions, cultures, or educational traditions".

My second stop while reading this article was when math phobia was brought up and learnt that not much effort was made to combat this in students', teachers' and parents, lives. Instead, parents and teachers continued on to pass that trauma on to the new generations in the name of advancement of science. As someone who grew up not having much understanding of the "why" of mathematics in her early years, I realized how important it is for our students to learn from teachers who are themselves passionate about mathematics and can recognize the beauty of it. This also reminds me of Lockhart's point that we must do math for the sake of simply doing math.

My third and final point of wonder and discovery was throughout this reading when I realized how much control one political party has over the education of millions of children. I do not believe it is fair for politics to have such a huge influence in education. Of course, education is and will always be political but as a future teacher, I hope that we can have more say than we do now in how we learn and teach in schools.