Re(2): [Maths-Education] Money Counts

[Mark S. BOYLAN(EDS)]

I would like to make the following points on the debate around money
counts in response to John Turan and Laurinda Brown.

I believe that the mathematics curriculum is already ideologically driven
both in terms of the content of the curriculum and the way that it is
commonly taught.
Our choices about what to teach, in what way and how to teach are always
choices of value. I think that Peter Gates declaration of his political
position as a socialist is both honest and makes transparent his purposes
in trying to influence the mathematics curriculum. Personally. I find it
hard to put labels on myself nowadays but for me a central concern is
empowering students to udnerstand the ecological, economic and social
forces that mean our current ways of living in the rich nations are
unsusatinable. When people do not say where they are coming form
politically I get mistrustful.

Too often mathematics education is seen as neutral in terms of value. So
we teach children about large numbers, put standard form in the text books
and curriculum but often this is done in neutral contexts and thorugh
repetitive exercises that are very boring. There are an implicit values in
doing this - mathematics as alien and pointless to the vast majority of
students. How about allowing our students to explore their relationship to
the world through number. To realise how incredibly big they are in
relation to the number of cells in their bodies and how incredibly small
they are in relation to the abundance of life on our planet. How about
exploring the relative size of wealth people own in the world. If Bill
Gates' height was proportional to his height how much bigger would he be
than people in the local community or a child sleeping on the streets in
Sao Paulo. 

Of course many teachers are already doing this sort of work. I remember
how a class of low attaining, disaffected working class students I taught
came alive when we discussed how much the Director of Direct Line
Insurance and engaged with the intellectual challenge of working our just
how many years their low paid mothers and fathers needed to work to earn
the equivalent of one days pay. "I'm gonna go home and tell my Da' about
this" one said. This may have been the first time he had wanted to talk to
his father about what he did at school.

I am sympathetic to Laurinda's remarks. Not least because I feel strongly
that when students have the experience of 'dreaming' mathematical worlds
into existence for themselves it can help to give the confidence to try to
create similar qualities of beauty, wonder, suprise, order, chaos, rhythm
and pattern in other areas of thier lives.

But given the fact that the Financial Services Industry wants to influence
what is taught in schools surely the main issue is do we want to provide
an alternative perspective which at least gives the possbility of students
making their own minds up. If we don't then the only voice that will be
heard is the corporate voice.

Mark Boylan
School of Education
Sheffield Hallam University
College House
Sheffield
S10 2BP
Tel 0114 2254398
e-mail m.s.boylan@shu.ac.uk





>My specific concrn in comenting on
>"Money Counts" was that it could easily become ideologically driven,
>rather
>than mathematically driven, and not provide that "intellectually engaging
>context" which I believe is important