Battleground Schools Reflection

 I learned a lot from reading this article. The first thing that stopped me was in the first few line - the three movements of math education in the twentieth century. I had never heard of that before - I'd always thought of math being taught the same way for the past hundred years. It was quite interesting to learn that there was this progressivist period of math education that was inquiry based. I also found it ironic that that's the model of education that we're aiming for now. Trends are so cyclical, I suppose that education is not immune to these cyclical trends either. 

The second thing that stopped me, simply because I found it so funny, was this line "those who like mathematics are (generally male) eggheads, nerds, absent-minded professors, and mad scientists, unable to cope with the world of human interactions, and not fully mentally competent (ranging from the mildly autistic to the completely mad)".  I do agree that the public has this perception of mathematicians. It reminds me of an interaction my sister had at work that she told me about. She was talking to one of her coworkers and she mentioned that her sister and her sisters husband were mathematicians. Her coworker looked at her wide eyed and said "... I wonder what that house is like.". I had a good laugh, what must he have pictured our house was like? Equations written on every wall? Non-stop talk of mathematics? Mad scientists with crazy hair? 

The third thing that stopped me in the article was "Conservative attitudes towards mathematics education were adopted by a number of right-wing evangelistic Christian religious lobby groups. Traditionalist, antiprogressive views on mathematics teaching and learning quickly became affiliated with a patriarchal, authoritarian, fundamentalist religious agenda, including antigay rights, antiabortion, and pro school prayer lobbies." I knew that in the past math was influenced by religion, but I had no idea that in the 1990's it was still being influenced by religion. I think of math as such a secular subject, it's hard for me to grasp why religious groups had opinions about it. It's very interesting to me that they chose math as something to latch onto.