I will likely be a math teacher, whether or not I'm
employed as one, for the rest of my life.
It's natural to think about education when one learns math as a profession. One is always a teacher and a student. And yet this doesn't make it easy. In fact, one must be very careful to avoid a certain blindness common to our kind. In a larger sense the issues of math education are some of the most important of public policy; like basic literacy, numeracy is often seen as a necessity for a democracy. I don't have the answers (or believe that easy ones exist), but I continue to read and write about math education, about ways to criticize and improve what is done in the classroom.
I began to think seriously about math ed when I first read two books by Reuben Hersh and Philip Davis:
The Mathematical Experience and Descartes' Dream.
These writings are still the first things I mention when I speak of my philosophies of math education. As such I belong to what is referred to as the "humanistic" school.
In the future, I hope to accomplish two things with regards to this discipline in addition to my plans to infect students with an interest in the subject.
1. To help create or at least theorize a math-based videogame that is not horrible. This is not easy. Current and past attempts trivialize both and pander to their audiences.
2. To write a series of math comics. In this field there has been some success, and for further improvements I have much hope. I will of course be in need of an artist as I can't draw my way out of a paper bag. Hopefully, my wife can lend both her considerable skill with a pen as well as with all things educational.
It's natural to think about education when one learns math as a profession. One is always a teacher and a student. And yet this doesn't make it easy. In fact, one must be very careful to avoid a certain blindness common to our kind. In a larger sense the issues of math education are some of the most important of public policy; like basic literacy, numeracy is often seen as a necessity for a democracy. I don't have the answers (or believe that easy ones exist), but I continue to read and write about math education, about ways to criticize and improve what is done in the classroom.
I began to think seriously about math ed when I first read two books by Reuben Hersh and Philip Davis:
The Mathematical Experience and Descartes' Dream.
These writings are still the first things I mention when I speak of my philosophies of math education. As such I belong to what is referred to as the "humanistic" school.
In the future, I hope to accomplish two things with regards to this discipline in addition to my plans to infect students with an interest in the subject.
1. To help create or at least theorize a math-based videogame that is not horrible. This is not easy. Current and past attempts trivialize both and pander to their audiences.
2. To write a series of math comics. In this field there has been some success, and for further improvements I have much hope. I will of course be in need of an artist as I can't draw my way out of a paper bag. Hopefully, my wife can lend both her considerable skill with a pen as well as with all things educational.
