Sustainable Mathematics

 

There are couple of points from the article that really resonated with me. Mathematics as a subject is often seen as a purely academic discourse with little relevance to the real world. Often, students who are “good” are math are “good” at calculations but not necessarily “good” at the greater scope of mathematics. As I have slowly learned this year, Mathematics can been experienced in many forms such is in art, geometric, nature, music, daily life and in the sciences. While this idea was in the back of my mind throughout my academic career, I really had not given it much thought. With the movement towards the (not so) new curriculum there has been a greater emphasis the on not so much pure mathematics as with numeracy and being able to actually apply mathematics to daily life. This brings me to the first point in the article that resonated with me. The author mentions that integrating the environment into the discourse of the mathematics classroom creates a more genuine mathematics education speaks to the idea that be allowing student to relate mathematics to something more tangible to them such as the environment makes math more meaningful to them and will have a greater impact. Another point the resonated with me is the ideas that emotions play a crucial role in decision-making and human action and that we need “feel” the numbers or the effect on us would be diminished. I feel that in order to “do math” effectively we need to be able have a feel for numbers. It is an important skill for students to be able to give a number context, without context numbers are meaningless. You are simply shuffling things around to get a result. With a feel for a number, you are able to better understand a problem and to be able to determine if there is merit to the answer you obtain after calculations. I feel that mathematics is much more than just meaningless calculations, it is a living language that allows us to come to deeper understanding of the world around us.