A Juggling Act
After examining various philosophies regarding the purpose of schools I am left with the feeling that I will be teaching and juggling at the same time. I will have to juggle my responsibilities to the students and to the state, teaching methods, and my personal goals as a teacher. To study philosophy is to do more than recite facts and dates, it is an activity that involves applying philosophical insights to real life. Looking at Essentialism and Social Reconstructivism I am beginning to understand how these philosophies will influence and direct me as a teacher.
Considering the body of knowledge a math teacher is supposed to pass on to the students, the philosophy of Essentialism is the most attractive to me as a teacher. Most of what I will teach hasn’t been altered in over a century. The advances of mathematics in the Twentieth Century have been at the higher levels of math beyond Calculus, which is the highest discipline commonly offered at the high school level. The only real difference between Perennialism and Essentialism is the introduction of computers into everyday life, and computer skills can reciprocate into mathematical skills. Python, a programming language developed by Guido van Rossum (http://www.python.org ), is particularly useful in teaching mathematics because it allows the student to think like a mathematician (Urner, 2001).
Essentialism and Perennialism do not, in my opinion, offer a satisfactory philosophy of teaching mathematics in the modern school because they are both rooted in the western civilization they miss a rich tapestry of information that can interest student in learning about math. The history of math is global in scale and cultures from all over the world have contributed to our modern knowledge and methods of math. For example the simple symbol we use for the number zero was developed by Hindus in India around 650 A.D. (Asimov, 1959).While it is true that the basic mechanics of math (counting, addition, long division, etc.) must be memorized and practiced, which the Progressivists abhor (Ornsfien and Lewis, 2003), they also have no inherent cultural roots: There is no ‹Hispanic way’ to factor integers nor is there a ‹African-American method’ of finding all of the solutions of a polynomial in the complex plane.
My overall belief about the purpose of schools falls directly in line with Social Reconstructivists. I believe that schools are the best tool for forging a better society than the one we currently live in. As a math teacher, I don’t see myself bringing about global awareness in my students as much as I see myself promoting the idea that mathematics are already global in scale. The entire world contributed to math and the entire world has benefited from it.
I am not saying that while a social studies teacher must work to bring the student body into the global village the math teacher can sit back and say “been there, done that, got the t-shirt." The math teacher is part of the globalization of students’ awareness, but it is aimed backwards in time where the social studies teacher must point students forward in time.
So I will juggle methods throughout my teaching career. I must teach mechanics and enable the students to pass state mandated benchmarks. I must have a sense of cultural diversity in how I teach, which is reflected in the methods I will use to teach math. The quadratic equation is a difficult equation for students to memorize despite it’s usefulness in examining parabolas. My concern is that extreme cultural sensitivity will hamstring my ability to be an effective teacher. For example, an easy way to remember the quadratic equation is to sing it a few times to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel." Most of my students should be familiar with this common children’s song, but not all of them will have grown up with it. Luckily the tune is simple and even those who haven’t heard it can pick it up easily.
Another good method for teaching math currently being developed by the Oregon Curriculum Network relies on using computer programming to build mathematical skills. While this method can weaken the students mechanical skills it shows promise to do wonders to build math literacy. Not only are math teacher part of the group that can teach computer literacy, but in teaching students to program computers we can increase their mathematical ability and their problem solving skills. Programming computers forces the programmer to think algorithmically which is a major part of mathematical and everyday life problem solving. Computer programming skills are also not limited to mathematical purposes. I have written several programs that helped me solve problems in Games Magazine(tm) and the Weekend Edition: Sunday puzzle on NPR, which are mostly problems involving vocabulary or spelling.
There is more to juggle. Computers are not the only way to teach math literacy, or numeracy, and one of my personal goals as a math teacher is to help my students think like a mathematician. This involves logical and deductive reasoning skills to solve everyday, practical problems. Math literacy is also helpful in todays advertising saturated world to see how statistics and numbers can be used to mislead people. Noticing and resisting deliberate propaganda takes several skills that every teacher can help build in students. Math teachers can build numeracy skills that allow students to see misleading charts and graphs for what they are and to watch statistical information closely.
When I look at myself as a future teacher I keep seeing myself juggling what I want to give my students with how I am supposed to teach them and how I make math an interesting subject. There are conflicts with what I want to see the schools doing for our future and what I can do as a Math teacher to help build that future. It’s a good thing that I know how to juggle three balls already. If I got tossed a fourth I might have to drop everything.
References
Urner, K. (2001). We shall overcome regarding the use of a very high level language in the pre-college mathematics classroom. Retrieved July 6,2003 from the World Wide Web: http://www.inetarena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/overcome.html
Ornsfien, A., & Lewis, D. (2003) Foundations of Education (8th ed.) Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin
Asimov, I. (1959). Realm of Numbers. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin