Imlisanen Jamir
Against the backdrop of the not so surprising revelation that schools in Nagaland have not been able to achieve the desired level of performance in mathematics, here’s a message to students, teachers and the state.
To students: When we take math in school, there’s the common response of “Oh, I will never need to use this in my life.” This happens as we learn trigonometric identities or Pythagorean theories —or whatever it is we vaguely remember but remain assured that they’ll probably never show up again in our lives.
But this way of thinking misses something important. It misses the fact that the act of learning how to do the math establishes a new kind of brain wiring; a problem solving brain wiring. It’s not about what we learned but it’s about what methods, tools and tactics we had to develop in order to solve the problem which we may never see again in our lives. But we will see other problems, where these methods and tools will become immensely valuable.
It’s no different from where in the liberal arts, students are tasked to write a paper on movements or personalities or thoughts from the history of the world. These students may never need to know about those personalities or events again. So what’s the point?
The point is what did you do to conduct the research? What did you do to compose the sentences? How did you choose the words to communicate an idea? That is the value of education—not how much information we can pour into our heads but how equipped we are at the end to explore the world on our own after we get out of the classroom.
To the teacher: Do your best to make students attentive and consistent. You can't miss a day or two or miss a topic and then come back and expect to be okay. Move slower and make sure the entire class has mastery of a step before moving on to the next. This actually speeds up the entire academic year because as fewer road blocks are encountered later on. Also, stop giving student’s mathematical tricks before they grasp the basic principles; and ensure that wherever possible demonstrate the application of the math to tangible situations.
More importantly, the larger issue of teaching math is how children will learn to use the subject to make sense of and transform the world around them. Push for a curriculum that is not shaped by corporate notions of “competitiveness” or the demands of a labor market. Children deserve to be taught math in ways that help make visible the ecological, social, and community issues that will shape their lives and their futures. They need math skills that help them understand and care for the planet and each other, not wage test-score wars.
And to the State: Facilitating research in teaching methodologies is great; keep doing more. But please give the students enough math teachers first?
Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com
