By Mike Shore, Secondary Representative
It’s 4:00 am and I find myself in a hotel room in Holyoke, Massachusetts, staring through the dark at some strange light pattern on the ceiling with my daughter blowing her nose. She is getting over some virus (not Covid) that has been making its way through the school. But I digress. We are here in Central Mass to attend admitted students’ day at UMass Amherst. She had been admitted into the College of Behavioral Science for, get this, Journalism. I did not know that journalism is a behavioral science.
As my daughter enters that next phase of life, I find myself reflecting upon my own college journey. This is not the first time this has happened in the recent weeks. Both of my daughters are taking an introduction to philosophy course at their respective schools and hating it. They both dislike the apparent random, arbitrary, and esoteric nature of the material. The irony is that I was a philosophy major. What drove me to love philosophy is what is driving them away. This is the way the philosophers define words, terms and then use them to explain their concepts. Both daughters think that the philosophers are saying absolutely nothing that is in the least way comprehensible.
As a teacher of mathematics, I think that I hear echoes of my students in my own children. They talk about math in the same terms that my daughters are talking about their philosophy courses. “What do these words mean? What are they saying? How does this relate to my actual life?” These philosophers have strung together selectively defined terms to create an argument that “doesn’t make any sense.” Well, I say, you are reading a translation of the text and a translator’s interpretation. We must assume that the translator is steeped in the language of philosophy and understands the argument being made. As teachers of mathematics, we use a language that is steeped in tradition, and we are interpreters for our students. We create lessons that use mathematical language and terms to define concepts. In fact, this language is saturated with mathematical meaning. Our students are not saturated but overwhelmed. They do not have this deep understanding of the meaning of these words and the concepts which lie behind them. Instead, the words which we are using only hold meaning in a limited context due to their limited mathematical exposure.
At 4:00 am, I am realizing that I have been thinking and talking math for over 30 years! In fact, I have been teaching certain courses longer than my current students have been alive! These students have only been talking math for 10 years in comparison. Mathematical terms that we use are connected to concepts that are centuries old and theoretically complex. So, it is no wonder that these delicate and fragile minds thrust into the math world struggle to reframe and integrate historically dense language into their limited world. Talk about a lack of equality! How much equality is there between a mathematics teacher and their students? I find myself thinking of this inequity every time I complain to a colleague that I cannot understand how the students cannot “get it” after I have explained “it” so many ways, so clearly. How is it possible that they cannot grasp this simple concept! Afterall, it can only be said in so many ways (and I have said them all).
Wait! Notice that the focus in this rant is me and not the students. It is all about me and not about the student. Equality requires us teachers to refocus and reframe from the perspective of our students who more than likely are coming into our math discussion with words and language tainted from mathematically traumatic experiences in lower grades or just a lack of mathematical exposure. When I ask, all too frequently many of my students can easily point to an unhappy mathematical experience that has soured them on math. So, the moral of the story, at 4:00 am in Holyoke, MA, is to hear our student’s voices. Encourage conversation and listen to what is being said. We cannot focus upon our dialogue and apparent clarity of speech. We must take what is said and weave our math into the conversation. Equality requires us to value the other, empathize not tolerate. Remember 30 years versus 10 years is not equitable.
NHTM Mathesis 