“Just Try It” In Mathematics Doesn’t Work If We Are Serving Broccoli
I should me more upset with Dan Meyer’s latest blog because it’s an attempt to launch a new phrase of mathematical stickiness to selling his Desmos/Amplify curriculum. But, commenting on the capitalistic nature of math education is like shooting fish in a barrel these days.
There is no universe where Dan Meyer reads this blog and goes “hmmm, never thought about that, Sunil”. He stills remains the king of the edu-celebrity world, and temperance of the words in his blog are not going to come from me.
But, they might — I say might — come from a peer in this world of “edu-celebrities”. That would be Dan Finkel, who has the most watched TED Talk on mathematics ever. And, because I know this Dan better, he would also bristle at any notion where his prominence rises above mathematics.
That simply, he would kindly reject the notion of being an edu-celebrity, and all the marketing/branding power that comes with it.
However, my audience — comfortably smaller — is different than the ones both Dans tend to write and speak for.
I see mathematics education as the villain here. It might be have donned new outfits and tried to speak in different tones over the years, but it’s still the villain in the story.
That’s because in general, K to 12 mathematics that is taught all over the world is a historical bouillabaisse of boring facts with boring procedures. The Desmos and Math For Loves of the world are unrecognized outliers of trying to do better.
And, in my opinion, Math For Love is even more of an outlier — as it focuses 100% on quality of content. The quality of delivery becomes almost moot because the content is high.
That why this “just try it” cannot/should not be accepted as some new default lingo to soften up students to the world of mathematics — that’s because the world of K to 12 mathematics is broccoli.
And until the K to 12 world of curriculum writers has the honesty to know that is what they are selling — especially in relation to the mathematics that students(and teachers) are unlikely to be directed towards(number theory, game theory, graph theory, fractals, unsolved problems, etc.) — nobody should be “just trying” broccoli.
It’s not what the poster food for mathematics should look like, unless we are talking Romanescu — as now the rabbit hole to talking about Africa, Mandlebrot, complex numbers, alternating currents, etc is opened up.
But, if we were to use the food metaphor for what the real world of mathematics looks like — and adopt some curious phrase of “trying it” — then something like Indian cuisine might be appropriate. Not just from delighting all the senses, but also having a cultural/historical aspect that parallels the importance of telling mathematical stories from countries like India.
If we want kids — and teachers — to try mathematics, we need to first understand that, at least relatively speaking, we are giving them twice-boiled broccoli on maybe a fancy plate with a variety of dipping sauces.
It’s still broccoli, folks…
