ECS 210: Week 6 Blog Post

August 19, 2020 0 By Jory Schwean

Part 1:

My view and experiences with math may very well differ from other people and that is because I have great parents. Math is a very controversial subject for most people in school because “it is to hard” or “way to confusing”. That is soley based on the fact that we have been approaching mathematics in all the wrong ways. In western culture we are taught that there is one way to do math problems to get to the required answer. End of story. This couldn’t be any more wrong and I am a great example as to why. I used to hate math because I never understood formulas or statistics. My dad showed me when I was young that, just because there is one right answer, doesn’t mean there is one way to find said answer. He showed me different strategies and approaches in order to become very fluent in math because I was taking a different mindset from everyone else and relating the questions back to real life situations. Because of this reason, I have come to really enjoy math and is still, to this day, one of my favorite subjects.

Just like my dad helped me like I explained earlier, it is easy to see how the readings we had this week challenge the Eurocentric conceptions surrounding mathematics. The Russell lecture, Poirier article as well as the Bear article show us different ways in which Inuit people challenge the Eurocentric norms by taking a different view and looking at the problem in a different way. As Russell mentions in her lecture, First Nations people do not understand things to be simple mathematical equations, but rather they had a deeper understanding of something’s value rather than it simply being a number. In Russell’s lecture, she discusses a lot about trade between the First Nations people and the Europeans. She mentioned that First Nations people understand that, in trade of sheep, each sheep has an intrinsic and spiritual value to them and their community. This is a far different view from the Europeans because they just see the sheep as a number and how much money that can be made from them. One side of this trade can see the value and not devalue the sheep, while the other side almost treats them as an equation.

Another way that the Inuit people challenge the Eurocentric vision of mathematics is numbers and how they should and shouldn’t grouped. In Western culture, it is very common for most schools to use a base 10 number system. It’s how everyone seems to be taught and it is a very fair way to solve number problems. Inuit mathematics takes a different approach, using a base 20 system instead. The system is completely different, but it is also a very valid way to think about and organize numbers. This Indigenous way of doing things may be different, but it shows us that there are multiple ways of knowing besides our narrow views we have been showed in the past. It challenges the Eurocentric belief that there is only one way to solve a math problem.

A third way that Inuit mathematics challenges Eurocentric notions in the math classroom is teaching through telling stories orally rather than taking a theoretical approach like most Western culture schools. By using storytelling to teach math, we open a door to thinking more critically rather than just having students follow a one-way procedure in order to find the answer to a problem. This becomes an issue because most students in Western culture will go ahead with these procedures and have no idea what they are actually doing, they are just doing what they are told. If we used storytelling, it forces kids to apply themselves and find new ways of thinking, so they can retain what they are being taught!

Part 2:

Being from a small town, there is no doubt in my mind that I was presented with a white majority mindset in my schooling. The story I was presented and had to work with throughout my school life was to work hard, dedicate myself to my work, help one another and to follow rules created by people who are usually white. While this is a very narrow mindset, I wish I could have been exposed to other points of view in order to further my education. For example, instead of following a protocol or procedure to follow a math problem, I wish I would have been told why this is the way it is and how it affects me. In short terms, in my schooling life, I was taught to put my head down, follow the rules and be a good student in the eyes of my teacher. This is a very individualistic mindset, but I can’t go back and change my schooling now. I can only change what I will do in the future.

I can see myself bringing many of the biases I have learned in my past into my classroom. It’s a sad thought but it’s the truth. Like I said previously, I can only work on my future, not my past. I need to work hard to overcome the biases I may have by educating myself about different worldviews, so I won’t make the same mistakes that my previous teachers have in the past. Looking at different points of view will allow me to get my future students to understand what I am trying to tell them through multiple different lenses opposed to just one singular lens. If I successfully achieve my above goals, I feel that I will become an effective teacher and I will be able to help my students to my full extent!