Why teach math? Response
Before reading the article, I think a little bit of mathematical history is helpful when incorporated into teaching. From my personal learning experience in math, it seems that math is presented often upfront as “you need to learn this because it exists”, and while there are usually good links and development in the order they are presented, exactly why they are presented remains a myth. Much of the “why” reasoning relies on the student to reflect on. I think that for the most part, mathematics taught in k-12 level is about solving very real problems that we could find in history that we might no longer think of them as problems. I believe that using questions posed by people in the early days could give meaning to modern problems that we so easily solve without thinking too much about why we solve them. I would prefer to integrate tales and historical accounts of math problems and present them as the introduction of my lesson followed by how we solve these problems. For inst...