I am 60. I Finally Get To Teach Mathematics Without Institutional Compromise
Ever since my business venture, The Right Angle, burned down in 2013, a certain math book has always occupied the top shelf of my bookshelf. It’s really the only shelf you need to see to understand most of my personality: a picture of me with my mother in Australia, a marble elephant(carrying her children) I bought in India in 2011, my childhood batmobile, Lemmy, Bourdain, and Friedman’s photography book, “Fuck You Heroes”.
The math book which centers it, centers my philosophy for teaching mathematics. Up until recently, it simply seemed like mathematics for another world — not this one. This one, in terms of education, has sucked all the fuckin’ life out of it.
But, I have gotten sick of my own voice talking about it. Sick of my rants about mathematics education and the direction that is recklessly heading in — edu-celebrity fascination and unabated infatuation with pedagogy.
Zero interest and curiosity for mathematics and zero interest/focus on how that is related to mental health.
Celebrating the beauty and wisdom of mathematics?? That burned down a while back.
Education is Rome. It’s on fire. Yet, everyone wants a fiddle in 2024.
The exodus has started.
t only seemed like an inevitability that my vision of teaching mathematics would land well outside the perimeter of institutionalized education — where rampant testing/assessment and compliance of bullet points in a curriculum dwarf any residue of humanity in the classroom.
Well, I am thrilled to announce that I am going to be at Conduit, a small startup virtual school catering to parents who are homeschooling their children, but want to feel connected to a learning hub that is aligned with the vision and philosophy of this 1956 Mark Launer print.
Mathematics is exactly the world as depicted in this print — filled with imagination, exploration, and endless joy and wonder. It’s literally a tree of life. Mathematics is freedom.
What has math education done to that tree?
There are no stories. There is no history. There is no present — what current endeavours/problems/proofs are being discussed? Where are the holy trinity of theories — number, game, and graph?
And, algebra is has been shamed into obscurity because of it being “unnecessary”. If math education even had the slightest clue as to the importance and enormity of algebra, it wouldn’t treat it like some unwanted stranger.
Guess what? Algebra is giving my daughter a new life with mathematics — literally. And, we will be speaking about it next month.
It’s going to be liberating to talk to students — and parents — about the magic and mystery of mathematics, and not worry about what curriculum(generally weak mathematics) gets covered.
It’s going to be games, puzzles, logic mazes, prime numbers, number problems, stories, conundrums, and mysterious patterns.
I am ready to teach mathematics in this state of romantic purity for the first time!
The tree climbing starts next month!
