<1st article>
Author: Edward Doolittle
Source: Proceedings of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group Conference (pp. 17-25).
<2nd article (dialogue)>
Author: Edward Doolittle, Florence Glanfield
Source: For the Learning of Mathematics, 27 (3), 27-30.
The author, Edward Doolittle, has Indigenous ancestors and started to be interested in own root when he was in undergraduate. As he is both mathematician and "Indian" (I deliberately use this word here because he used it in this article), the main goal in his long journey is how to "resolve the apparent incompatibility between being a mathematician and being an Indigenous person." (p.19)
The dialogue between Edward Doolittle and
Florence Glanfield started with the story of "Mathematics as Medicine". In
their conversations, they point out many arguments/questions about formal
mathematics education and Indigenous culture. Firstly, they discuss that
mathematics is required in the societies. Doolittle questions what the adequate
amount of mathematics is necessary and has doubt for that the all mathematics school
teaches is really necessary. Additionally, they claim formal mathematics
education devalued the value of relationship between mathematics and all other things.
They say Indigenous education leads people to find or develop own answer to
natural phenomena by themselves, but Western does not. Doolittle addresses mass
productions can account for this issue. Mass productions force people to have
the consistency between input and output, rather than individual control. They
suggest to turn into how Indigenous can help Western from how Western can help
Indigenous, and they raise the issue "(W)hat way(s) can Western society become 'balance' in valuing multiple strengths and contributions." (p.29) They stress
that "knowing who you are and how fit in" is important for balanced development.
Response:
The critic in the article of Doolittle about
oversimplified ethnomathematics by non-indigenous scholar stopped me to think
my attitude for research in general. As non-indigenous people cannot become
indigenous people, it is impossible for me to have the perfectly same insight
as indigenous people. This article is written by Doolittle who has Indigenous
root, and it contains the perspective of Indigenous thought. I agree with the
idea that "how Indigenous can help Western", not "how Western can help
Indigenous". Like international cooperation, it is crucial to think what
developing countries need from view of themselves rather than from developed
countries. Therefore, to avoid oversimplification of ethnomathematics, the real
voices of Indigenous people is obviously necessary to study ethnomathamtics.
However, I wonder about the idea that
Indigenous people lose their culture while they improve their academic performance
in mathematics is true. I suppose there are a lot of spaces to learn
mathematics other than school, so they can learn cultural contextualized
mathematics outside of school while they learn universal mathematics at school.
School mathematics may reduce time to learn their culture, but I disagree with that
they lose their culture by school mathematics.
Question:
- Canada is known as a multicultural society. How can you provide your students mathematics class which involve well-balanced cultural context?
- Can mathematics make our lives better as a people, or are its benefits restricted to just a few fortunate individuals?
Great questions, Tsubasa! with regards to your response, I think that the idea that one loses their culture at the expense of mathematics education is very interesting. I have read some work by Glen Aikenhead; his work talks about science and science education as a culture and how people have to do cultural broder crossing to enter it. I can certainly see then, how crossing from the indigenous culture to math is more complicated than just meshing ethno and math together.
ReplyDeleteI think that one way to provide a well-balanced cultural context is to provide some context and history for mathematical concepts from several cultures including what we would usually consider normal. By showing students that concepts are created historically and that the dominant story is not the only story, we present cultural content in a meaningful way. However, if we present cultural math as a 'special topic' then we do not provide a balanced approach but rather re-create a notion that western math is normal and that cultural days are 'special/abnormal/inferior' For instance, I am planning a lesson about Ramunjan in my Piece of Pi class this week; I feel comfortable doing so because we have talked about how other mathematicians (Archimedes) estimated Pi in a different way earlier in class and so context has been provided for both scenarios.
I think that using math as a means to understand the world benefits everyone in that we can recognize beauty and patterns. I do think though, that we have to recognize that math is a culture and that there are barriers to entering this. By recognizing what our students will experience, we can try to address barriers directly.
Culture give one identity and make people appreciate one another. In a multicultural society, just like back in my country Kenya, we have 42 ethnic communities with different language and cultural background,in such a class room, when giving examples from one culture to another , main theme is to look at the positive part and let learners develop maths from it.
ReplyDeleteIn most cases in African context, teachers are swayed by ethnic hostility and may undermine others culture,this brought creation of clan schools resulting to shortage of teachers especially schools in rural areas where this is practiced have less student population and frequent tribal clash affecting learning.In urban schools, where students of different ethnicity are is currently getting roots, and becoming the solution to sporadic ethnic animosity witnessed in many parts of the African continent. Succeeding states in the continent are applying cultural education for different student to appreciate their coexistence.
Mathematics, if well planned and progressively developed from the initial stage of basic introduction, it becomes so interesting and opens the door to innovation, it is very fascinating watching young learners coming up with their new invented mathematics games of cultural background.
Culture give one identity and make people appreciate one another. In a multicultural society, just like back in my country Kenya, we have 42 ethnic communities with different language and cultural background,in such a class room, when giving examples from one culture to another , main theme is to look at the positive part and let learners develop maths from it.
ReplyDeleteIn most cases in African context, teachers are swayed by ethnic hostility and may undermine others culture,this brought creation of clan schools resulting to shortage of teachers especially schools in rural areas where this is practiced have less student population and frequent tribal clash affecting learning.In urban schools, where students of different ethnicity are is currently getting roots, and becoming the solution to sporadic ethnic animosity witnessed in many parts of the African continent. Succeeding states in the continent are applying cultural education for different student to appreciate their coexistence.
Mathematics, if well planned and progressively developed from the initial stage of basic introduction, it becomes so interesting and opens the door to innovation, it is very fascinating watching young learners coming up with their new invented mathematics games of cultural background.