The Last of Us: Mathematics Leadership Has Abandoned Those Who Love Its Humanizing History
The scene is easy to read: The strawberry, in all its glory — aromatically sweet, tart on the tongue, maybe even a bit leafy — is the fruit of a former world. From the decay of a fungal overgrowth erupts new life, the strawberry. And not only is the ground fertile enough to allow for rebirth, in this case, the missing ingredient was love. The bite of a strawberry in The Last of Us is a taste of hope. (And one easily destroyed by fungal infection.)
Like the strawberry in the above description by Matt Patches, mathematics is the fruit of a former world…
As we get ready to welcome the long awaited Season 2 of The Last of Us, I can’t dismiss a truth that is disappointing and perhaps provocative. Mathematics education is not dying — it’s dead.
To be specific it is dead with math history, storytelling, and a pillar for thousands of years of curiosity — number theory.
It’s a parade of pedagogical edu-celebrities selling either themselves or wholly inert techniques/strategies that treat mathematics with unconscious disrespect, reducing it to efficient procedures that could only benefit — profit — the seller and a naive audience.
At the top of the dumpster fire has to be Building Thinking Classrooms — that actually prides itself to work with any curriculum. Considering that content of most K to 12 curriculum is a dog’s breakfast, BTC is actually advocating for putting lipstick on pig.
When the writing surface — the writing surface — eclipses and/or is indifferent to the quality of mathematics on that surface, you’re serving a dog’s breakfast on nicer tables.
Those tables, as nice as they are pushed to be, reside in the bleakest of dining halls — the dreary staircase climb through math education.
The intentions are good, but as my mentor Peter Harrison said “It’s bad lessons planned well”. He said that over 20 years ago.
The core problem is that history of mathematics, and those who champion it, have been politely escorted to the margins of mathematics education. It’s all about the strategic worship of pedagogy — because pedagogy sells and is inextricably tied to the meat and potatoes requirements of students and their test scores. It’s bleak, but that again is marketed in a way to make it sound like the breakfast you are eating is buttermilk pancakes with fresh strawberries — when it’s the dog’s breakfast.
The official writing on the wall occurred in 2023.
Can it get any bloody clearer than that? In a theme of about “Stories”, in which that is basically what I am known for — and ironically helped with that theme for NCTM Annual 2022 (I was on the Planning Committee)— NCSM Leadership said “no thanks”.
Another straw of math education leadership trust that broke was when I pulled out of CAMT 2023 because of my daughter’s mental health. This ice cold email is easily one of the worst examples of communication I have ever seen in this space.
Maybe I am blind, but I didn’t see any acknowledgment of my daughter’s mental health. Unfortunately, Paula isn’t the only one who doesn’t care about mental health and mathematics. All three CMC Conferences rejected the proposal below for their 2024/2025 Conferences.
Mathematics history is dead and mental health awareness is not far behind.
It’s all related. History is humanizing. Having empathy for students — and teachers — struggling with mental health requires humanizing.
Mathematics has been a balm, restorative place of hope in our darkest places — death beds, incarceration, holocaust camps, and suicidal ideation.
Not the mathematical crap we serve up in school and bake it in the pedagogical oven at 400 degrees for days, but mathematics that puts us in FLOW and diverts us from even our most dire life situations.
For a whole day this past week, this is what I did with St. Louis teachers — K to 12. Be in Flow with the mathematics of our humanizing past.
And recharge yourself with doing **that** mathematics with your colleagues.
I also told them that they would be experiencing many of these emotions — none of which are in conflict. The only place they seem to be in conflict is mathematics education, where straight-line efficiency is the cultish mantra.
Here is a short list of the problems/ideas that we did:
Binary/base 2 problems
Odds/Evens
Prime numbers
De Polignac’s Conjecture
Goldbach Conjecture
Beyond Exponentiation — Tetration
Why is 70 a “Weird Number” in number theory?
Patterning problem that shows the Hemachandra/Fibonacci numbers
That was just the morning before break at 10:45…Here is a pictoral illustration of why we need to know the beauty of perfect numbers — for richer factual fluency(braided with history).
Math education seems to be okay with just knowing 4 x 7 = 28.
But, you never change the existing reality by complaining for fighting the system. After being an educator for over 25 years, I have only just realized that now.
And so, this Fall I have invited a group of equally disgruntled educators from all around the globe to build something better — by putting our eyes back on the history and humanity of mathematics.
Long ago there was a dream, had to make a choice or two
Leaving all I loved behind for what nobody knew
Stepped out on the stage
A life under lights and judging eyes
Now the applause has died and I can dream again
Is there anybody listening?
Is there anyone that sees what’s going on?
Read between the lines, criticize the words they’re selling
Think for yourself and feel the walls
Become sand beneath your feetFell the breeze?
Time’s so near you can almost taste the freedom
There’s a warm wind from the south
Hoist the sail and we’ll be gone
By morning, this will all seem like a dream
And if I don’t return to sing the song, maybe just as well
I’ve seen the news and there’s not much I can do aloneIs There Anybody Listening, Queensryche 1990
