Reflection on Battleground Schools and Video About Math Teaching

This article briefly describes how Mathematics falsely appears to people as hard, and inhuman. In twentieth century, Mathematics has gone through three major movements, John Dewey, New Math and NCTM. These changes are more subject to political purposes rather than its generic concept. Up until today, the battle between conservatives and progressive continue to enact and the fighting over which method is better in educating students or in producing more elite members has not come to an consensus due to the involvement of politics.

This article ties closely to the discussion about instrumental and rational understanding. the feeling of arguing over which conception is better and the thought of not to come to a consensus seems to never-ending because the intention has been misled by and from the political point of view. This pretty much explains the reason that in some countries that children were told to proceed excessively in Mathematical studying and think that by succeeding in mathematics, a better education is achieved, which ultimately contributes political pleasure and purposes, rather than personal educational development. Nevertheless, I find that John's idea towards math coincides with mine. As discussed in instrumental and relational understanding, there is actually a fine line between these two understanding before bringing both methods to an extreme. a balance with adequate adoption of these understandings may benefit more in math education and create more elite members. However, because of political intention about the national superiority, math ends up facilitating between two ends.

The concept of teaching mathematics is beneficial as to equip students with understanding and thinking skills. However, it is the discouraging presentations and the curriculum that drop bombs on students and parents. Students with bad experience naturally turn their face away from learning mathematics. In order to catch their attention and cultivate their interests in learning math, teachers need to present in a way so that they can engage with their students. This reminds me of the class discussion with Dr. Lucus over the topic: Is Mathematics an invention or discovery?. One of my thinking is that Mathematics is a language which can describe our daily living experience into the alphabets created by mathematicians. In the video, the teacher cunningly lures out his students pure interest in the language he uses. With simple back-and-forth routine, in fact the basic sequential concept in math. Along with the skillful introduction of mathematical language linked closely to spoken language combined with the visual illustration, the teacher also engages his teaching with several hands-on activities. There are different types of students where they learn better reading, listening and doing. Knowing this can be beneficial for students while adequately adopted and as "knowing is half a battle," the real challenge is to be able to equip these into classroom teaching. And, it is amazingly intellectual that the teacher actually combine all three learnings into his lecture. His teaching provides an inspirational perspective for teachers to think about how they intend for their own teachings.