Author: Marcia Ascher
Source: Historia Mathematica. 22(1995), pp. 347-370
The Marshall Islands locates in the central Pacific Ocean and it consists of many atolls. For Marshall Islanders, sailing
canoes is important for the transportation and collecting food purposes, and stick
charts are unique devices to train their next generations how to pilot and to locate
each island for sailing. Ascher explores those stick charts from their cultural
and ideational contexts in this paper. According to the article, maps can tell us
information about physical representations in analogical space while we cannot directly
see them by our eyes. In case of stick charts, which are made of palm ribs,
shells, and coconut fibers, they are classified into following two types. 
The other ones are called “rebbelith”
and “meddo” which depict positional
relations of atolls in Marshall Islands (like “our usual” maps). The former one
shows relative positions of the islands with highly accurate proportion, and the
latter one focuses on specific sub-region with little accurate distances. Both
of them give the navigators significant information, although they do not carry
it on their voyage because they rely on their memory and body.
Ascher suggests stick charts will enrich the discussion of tight
connection between mathematics and physics, since this model has not been seen
in Western cultures. Moreover, Marshall Islanders’ analogical planar
representations are embedded in their culture and this “independent of writing
system” can apply for any culture or medium.
Response:
Ascher remarkably describes stick charts of
Marshall Islanders from their mathematical and cultural context with occasionally
comparing Western cases. I agree with that these particular cultural
perspectives which Western do not have will positively impact on our idea of
mathematics and mathematics education.
If I could talk to the author or Marshall Islanders, I would ask
them how stick charts were developed in their culture. Because it might be
impossible to build high quality stick charts in one generation, their ancestors
might have to develop it by going through trials and errors. I believe those
developing procedures in mathematical contexts also could be important in
ethnomathematics. Additionally, I also would ask them the “current” situations
about stick charts. I briefly googled stick charts and found they rarely use it
now: thus, this significant system is getting to be lost. My interest is how
they feel about this - how do they feel if the stick charts are going to be
disappeared? Do they want to conserve stick charts? How do they think stick
charts can be conserved? etc.
My other question to the author (or other experts
in ethnomathematics) is the relationship between this case and ethnomathematics.
Ethnomathematics is defined as following:
The prefix ethno is today accepted as a very broad term that refers to the social-cultural context and therefore includes language, jargon, and codes of behavior, myths, and symbols. The derivation of mathema is difficult, but tends to mean to explain, to know, to understand, and to do activities such as ciphering, measuring, classifying, inferring, and modeling. The suffix tics is derived from techné, and has the same root as technique (D’Ambrosio, 1990, p. 81).
The case of Ascher, stick charts of
Marshall Islanders, represents the model of oceanographic phenomena, and it can
be said this case is one of ethnomathematics. However, I suppose they are also deeply
related to physics area. If there were “ethnophysics” as a discipline, how can
we distinguish ethnomathematics and “ethnophysics”?
Question:
Have you ever taught your students in any cultural
context during the mathematics class?
If yes, what kind of cultural context in
mathematics did you teach?
(Optional question)
What do you think the difference between
ethnomathematics and ethnophysics (or other “ethno-science” fields which are using
mathematics contents) is?
What I find interesting about this is how mathematics is taught in a way that revives a culture. By actually teaching a former way of living and navigating, students are learning something from their place that would otherwise be lost.
ReplyDeleteI think I have haphazardly used cultural references to teach a concept in math but I do not think I have really revived a culture by teaching a mathematical concept in a specific way. I previously worked in a Metis community in Northern Saskatchewan so we identified shapes as a builder made a canoe. Or I use references from my Indian background to relate to my students whose parents also immigrated for example.
My parents were born in India, they were born in the late 1940s, early 50s and moved here in 1970. They grew up in a system that was heavily influenced by the British. This makes me wonder about what was lost as they un-learned some of their Indian ways of knowing. How did they organize their thinking and living in that way (many were farmers in Punjab), what math was involved?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTsubasa, its quite unfortunate that the rich navigational culture of the people of marshall island may disapear without an attemp to improve or be developed. Mathematics concept of bearing was very much rooted in their rich culture.
ReplyDeleteTeachers have all along used traditional songs in introducing number concepts though it was discouraged by missionaries who introduced schools in Kenya. Missionaries did not want any form of cultural practices in their schools. Later on with introduction of independence schools, that is when girl could go to schools because missionary schools could not allow circumcised girls in their learning instituitions.Early enough, there was handwork on primary school's time table, this was purely constructing traditional artifacts. Currently I as a teacher of mathematics, no a very significant fact driven from ethnomathematics been using in my introduction a part from identifying shapes and practical ways of measurements.
Tsubasa, its quite unfortunate that the rich navigational culture of the people of marshall island may disapear without an attemp to improve or be developed. Mathematics concept of bearing was very much rooted in their rich culture.
ReplyDeleteTeachers have all along used traditional songs in introducing number concepts though it was discouraged by missionaries who introduced schools in Kenya. Missionaries did not want any form of cultural practices in their schools. Later on with introduction of independence schools, that is when girl could go to schools because missionary schools could not allow circumcised girls in their learning instituitions.Early enough, there was handwork on primary school's time table, this was purely constructing traditional artifacts. Currently I as a teacher of mathematics, no a very significant fact driven from ethnomathematics been using in my introduction a part from identifying shapes and practical ways of measurements.