Thinking back to my schooling and mathematics days I wasn’t one of the kids who struggled with math or who constantly needed help. I was always the first kid who wanted to answer the question because it made me feel smart and good about myself. I think after reading the article it is seen that there definitely is discriminatory behaviour within numeracy and mathematics. What I took out of the article is that it is this way for some students because it’s either a right or wrong answer in math. There’s not really no inbetween so when students are struggling and not getting the answers right the teachers are constantly harping on them about doing better when in reality they are trying their best. So personally since I was always a kid who loved and succeeded in math I never really had to deal with the discriminatory behaviour but I feel like it is present. Even within mathematics when things are taught they are only taught one way when different kids learn differently so they struggle with the math. Or kids coming from different cultures and ethnicities struggle with the new math they learn. I believe the European philosophy is the dominant type of teaching math and there isn’t much leverage on other philosophies to teach math.
Part 2: The Inuit communities live in a much different environment and have much different lifestyles than we do. They have adapted to those lifestyles though and shown many positives coming out of the Inuit communities. Because we have such different lifestyles Inuit community is forced to try and come up with different approaches to succeed with their daily lives, with mathematics and numeracy being one of the different practices they have learned and taught. Poirier highlights the ways in which Inuit mathematics challenge Eurocentric ideas throughout her article and how they are so different. There are many differences when dealing with the European mathematics compared to the Inuit mathematics. One of the ways our mathematic systems are different is the calendar theirs is not divided into days like ours-their calendar is based on natural, independently recurring yearly events that take place. Such as different rituals or practices that occur. Another difference through mathematics is the language. More of their mathematics is taught orally where as ours is practice and paper and pen, and tests, where as theirs is learned orally and from generation to generation. As well as it is being taught in completely different languages as it would be very difficult to learn their mathematics as well as vice versa. Another difference is in their practices they do. For example since they don’t have much space in their communities they are taught to assess the winds or to read different snow which is super cool but when learning math we don’t do any of those things.