I Can't Do Maths! by Professor Alf Coles

Author:Professor Alf Coles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

On cultural impositions

Maths certainly delights some people, and we certainly hope that children can experience such delight in the classroom, just as they might when reading a book or engaging with a piece of visual art. But if we’re going to recognise the cultural aspects of maths, then we also must acknowledge the negative effects some of these can lead to. We mentioned one above, in relation to Valerie Walkerdine’s idea of symbolic violence, when students feel literally hit over the head by alienating and debilitating mathematical objects. When formulas are created and used without adequate attention to the context in which they’ll be applied, they can cause much harm, as Cathy O’Neil shows in her book Weapons of Math Destruction (O’Neil, 2016). She shows how the algorithms used to determine which adverts you see on the internet or which products will be recommended to you when you shop online can adversely affect marginalised people. You could argue that it’s not the maths itself that’s to blame, but the way it’s used. However, when following mathematical values, the aim is to produce equations and relations that are universal and unbiased, but it is this very value that ends up making maths blind to social concerns.

In this light, teaching maths involves an important responsibility, not just to provide pupils with tools they’ll need in future, but also to help them understand the limits of these tools. This can be done with a wide variety of mathematical concepts. In teaching division, for example, the mathematical operation involves equal partitioning. So, we can split a set of goods into equal parts. But in some cases, we might want to distribute goods in a way that aligns with goals of equity rather than equality. How might we think of division if we want to distribute goods to people who have varying levels of wealth or property, for example? Another example might be asking why wage increases are always given in percentage terms, and what effect this has on wage disparity, compared with fixed sum increases – percentages are mathematically powerful because they provide a common measure through which to compare, but they can also hide significant details.

Similarly, there are some ways of thinking in maths that prioritise some kinds of understanding above others. For example, the value of objectiveness tends to lead to ways of talking that features the use of nouns over verbs. Nouns are less apt to betray a sense of action. We talk about the sum of two numbers rather than saying that we add one number to another. With a verb, there has to be a person involved in the action, and that in turn implies some subjectivity. In cultures where objectiveness is less valued, maths talk involves more verbs. For example, in the Mi’kmaw people of eastern Canada, the word for straight is pekaq, which translates as ‘it goes straight’ (Lunney Borden, 2011). Instead of thinking of a line as fixed and static, the Mi’kmaw line involves movement from one end to another.

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