Building Thinking Classrooms: The Pedagogical Cult That Has Ruined Mathematics Education Forever…
When I started teaching in the late 90’s, it was quite common place for kids in a math classroom to do work on the blackboard.
In my class it was their option if they wanted to — they didn’t have to. They weren’t forced to be up there, because you know, some kids don’t want to.
I never did. I sat in the back of all my math classes, quietly doing my homework — sometimes. Other times just doodling on my duotang or talking with my friends — sometimes about math.
The last thing I wanted to do was be up at chalkboard — even with friends — showing our math. That wasn’t my personality.
In 2025, I am guessing it’s not everyone’s either.
Unfortunately, everyone has to go the board and do math — generally the same, crummy math that most kids hate. And, the ones that don’t would be referred to as “slackers” by PL, according to the book.
As such, I have been Googling images of what has been going on these whiteboards in the name of BTC for a few months. Except for a few great teachers — Jamie Mitchell in Toronto and Robin Kubasiak in Michigan — most of the stuff I have seen on these whiteboard is the same lame stuff that has been hobbling around mathematics education for decades.
Putting this on the whiteboard does not bring it to life — and walking 10 feet to them isn’t pixie dust either.
It’s. A. Writing Surface. People.
There isn’t enough to write a blog — never mind a whole bloody book! And now there are “Institutes”? What’s next? Merchandise?
You want to use the whiteboard to work on the problem? Sure.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
What goes on a writing surface doesn’t play second fiddle to it — unless mathematics education believes that overbaked and overstretched pedagogy triumphs, dwarfs, and eclipses actual mathematics. That having students and teachers move around and gawk over content that was all but dead seconds ago, but has come to life on an inert, vertical writing surface, is the magic bullet that we’ve all been looking for.
Not me. The stuff I write on a whiteboard is the only thing that matters. That is the stuff that should have students excited.
Would you have a full day conversation about someone’s headphones and not what they are listening to?
Would you listen to someone go on about their new kitchen appliances and not what’s in their fridge — or what are we eating tonight?
Of course not.
But mathematics education is less and less about mathematics these days, and far more about style, flair, celebrity, and the hustle culture of peddling anything but mathematics.
BTC is a movement that will show in years to come, that it did nothing to inspire more kids to become mathematicians or be curious about the subject. It will only show that codifying the use of a writing surface is what got some math teachers out of bed.
Why not use it in every subject if it’s the bee’s knees? Let’s list all the tragic elements of King Lear on that surface. You name them, I will record them. NOW Shakespeare is cool.
Can’t wait to get to my geography class and draw The Great Lakes on them!
Y’all bought the “Monorail”, folks.
And, it only cost you thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars…