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Battleground Schools

This article is very interesting, especially since it is talking about how essential Mathematics is, and how vital has been having a knowledgeable Math teacher in our societies every now and then. After reading the article, I also realized there had been lots of controversies, disagreements and debates around mathematics studies in schools throughout decades.  Things that stopped me and made me think about the article were, it appears that the Mathematical methods and techniques taught in North American schools back then were more like instrumental approaches to the mathematics studies. The article is talking about how fearful and concerned parents were of the fact that how kids would not know the proofs of any math problems, how kids were forced to memorize and learn math concepts without  being proved, and how understanding or comprehension were not focus of math studies back in those days. 

 What also stuck me  is that ,mathematics used to be very frightening and scary for most kids and families. They found it very hard to understand, rigid, dry and even not useful for life, just because teachers did not have enough knowledge of math, were not well-informed or even educated enough in math education. I have some examples of these issues that are still happening in our schools even today; an art teacher was teaching math 7 in my son’s middle school, and a history educator, was teaching grade 9 math in the school where I was volunteering in. All these thing, made me realize that I am moving towards being a math teacher in a very good  and right timing!

Another thing that made me think; having been in IB DP program, by reading the part of adding Montessori approaches into the schooling studies, I realized how similar Montessori methods are with IB ones. In both approaches, students are encouraged to work on problems and try to solve it on their own,  look at everything in a deeper way, inquire more about everything they see, create a balance between their reading materials and the environment…and so on. There fore, I believe after watching kids succeed in the Montessori program, in terms of being well educated along with a deeper growth in their personalities, educators decided to come up with a modified, more adapted and internationally extra curriculum which can be used in entire world: International Baccalaureate. 

Comments

  1. Susan GerofskyOctober 16, 2017 at 11:26 AM

    Thanks Niloo. I think it is a bit oversimplifying to talk about math education 'back then' as just one thing (instrumental math, or the result of math phobias, etc.) Things were every bit as complex and polarized a century ago as they are now! Interesting to hear about your perceptions of Montessori and IB programs and their similarities.

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