Week 11: After taking some time to reflect on my experience with mathematics, I am surprised to find I only know one math education story. I can recall different ways of knowing math, such as patterns, textiles, and number literacy and mathematic equations. But as far as I knew, there was only math, which was the dominant narrative of my past. When I took infinite math with Dr. Doolittle, it was not until university that I learned about culturally based math such as First Nations, Inuit, Arabic and Mayan math bases creating an entirely different and functioning foundation for math. That culture worldwide had established math and number literacy systems that predate the Age of Discovery. This refers back to the second debate on the curriculum’s important content because creating the curriculum did not see the relevance in that content. My education taught me to believe there is only one math, innocently culturally insensitive perpetuating the oppression and discrimination of cultural identities through their ways of knowing. It was not until my education as an adult was my naivety realized.

After reading Poirier’s article: Teaching mathematics and the Inuit Community, I have identified three ways of knowing math in their culture. Their culture focused on the foundation that the building blocks of math are base 5 or 20. Instead of counting by base 10, like we commonly do, they count by base 5 and base 20 because each appendage has 5 units (fingers or toes) for counting 10- fingers and 10 toes made blocks of 20 to count by for larger quantities. The ways they taught math different they had an understood language that was all about the land and the seasons, the math was very usually to their environment. Inuit mathematics challenges Eurocentric ideas in that the standard unit of measure was not an actual tool but a symbol or body part. The accuracy on that measure was inaccurate; for example, they related 1 foot, or fingers length, as measurement tools to what was always at hand. There were no rulers or adding machines, making it easier for them to move about the country following food. It is essential to realize that no culture’s math is better than the other. Some may be more useful or easier to understand, but their math system was created out of a need with culture. It functioned as a working system of math with those values. Students need to learn about all different math forms, so they know more than one education story.

Works Cited

LittleBear2000JaggedWorldViewsColliding.pdf – Google Drive

Poirier(2007) Teaching mathematics and the Inuit community.pdf – Google Drive