Reflection on "Battle ground schools"

The whole contrast between conservative and progressive was interesting to reflect. It was shocking to see that according to conservatives the only reason to study math was just knowing “minimal math survival skills” and the “abstract technical skills” were only for a very small proportion of people whereas the progressive approach of math is to develop the problem-solving skills in all the students without any discrimination. Although I believe that fluency (supported by conservatives) is important in math, during my past school visits, and in my Canadian experience, I have seen the dependency of students on the calculators for simple calculations. Therefore, I think students should be taught in such a way that they understand the logic and then building on the logic they become fluent as well. (For instance, multiplication tables can be understood by thinking in groups, 12× 9 can be explained as 12 groups of 10 take away one group of 12)

I found that it is important for the math teacher to have a good grasp of the math concepts. I can understand how elementary school teachers have to teach everything including math even if they are not comfortable teaching math. But it is important to realize that the young students tend to develop the same attitudes which their teachers have, so it is essential to be always on the progress of learning and overcoming the “math phobia” and the other challenges for the enrichment in both students and teachers learning.

Dewey ‘s thoughtful remarks made me stop and digest them. I found it interesting how the two entirely different approaches (conservative and progressive) can lead to entirely different human beings. The Ones who are “obedient rule followers” and the other ones are reflective” scientific and democratic thinkers”. Students can greatly benefit and develop their mental inquiries by doing things and exploring its corollaries rather than just following the facts. Although I believe, doing practice, following the algorithms and knowing the reasons behind it, plays an important part in understanding math concepts in depth.

The rise and fall of the new math war is another evidence that the conservatives approach focusses on educating certain group of students who can understand abstract mathematics and have the potential to become future scientists, but we know that everyone has different  capabilities, so it is important to recognize those potentials of the students and design the pedagogies to help them explore their talents. In addition to this, I insist that we should also explore modern mathematics topics such as set theory, linear algebra, abstract algebra in addition to calculus to give the wide exposure to the students who want to extend their knowledge in math.