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- Yathirajsharma M. V.
Introduction to the article: This article presents a viewpoint where the author expresses regrets regarding the systemic failures in achieving educational goals, using an example from undergraduate mathematics classrooms. The opinion is not general in the sense it addresses all the targeted audience but general in the sense that it addresses most of them.
Alice was once told to find a cat which was born to a dog. Alice ran in search of it!
My journey began in a Non-Government Organization (NGO) dedicated to support public education system. Rather than working directly with students, our focus was on supporting government school teachers in their professional growth. Regular visits to schools allowed me to interact with children, giving me valuable insights into teaching methods (pedagogy). I often found myself amazed by the different ways children thought and wondered why they responded the way they did. Personally, I was curious to know how they understood mathematical concepts and how they perceived mathematical objects. It became clear that there was a problem with how math was taught. Children were taught algorithms without emphasizing the logic behind them. For example, they were taught to add numbers using carrying over without the idea of why. Additionally, children were getting tired before they even got to real-life math problems. This tiredness made it difficult for them to apply algorithms correctly, i.e. to choose a proper operation for the given scenario, even though they had a correct intution of what could have been done. The focus on getting a single-line answer, like for the sum of 18 and 24, showed a lack of emphasis on true mathematical understanding.