Living Math: Blowing off the dust to reveal a hidden art

[velvetpage]

What’s the connection between a quilt block on your bed and Islamic art in a Middle Eastern mosque? How about between a Native American woven basket and a china plate?

Why is water conservation an issue in Canada, which possesses most of the world’s fresh water?

Why do we tap a beat in sets of four for one song, but sets of three for another?

Your child may be asking and answering all of these questions in the course of their schoolday in a modern Ontario classroom, but in a non-traditional way: through the study of mathematics.

No longer the undisputed property of dusty textbooks and dry facts, the study of mathematics is evolving to recognize what those with good math skills have always intuitively known: mathematics is a cultural phenomenon. Students learn it best when they are encouraged to connect their school math to the math they see all around them – in their daily shopping, in their cooking, pouring out of their headphones, on their beds, and in their places of worship.

As teachers and students are encouraged more and more to look at mathematics as a broadly interconnected subject, students' learning inevitably improves. We all can remember a time when we used our understanding of one topic to aid our retention of material in another; for example, our understanding of Canadian geography helps us when we're trying to figure out what the fuss is about on Parliament Hill this week, as opposed to last week or six months ago. Children's brains work the same way.

Take, for example, a book about the water cycle. Sounds like a science topic, you say? Well, it is. It becomes a math topic when discussing the percentages of different kinds of water on earth; the volume of water represented by oceans, lakes, rivers, atmosphere, and ground water; the volume of water used daily on average by different populations around the world; graphs to compare this information in a format that is easy to read; and comparisons of the total water on earth to the amount used in a certain way. The questions raised about humans' water use are, of course, geography questions, and many of the answers will have their roots in history. Teachers use books like this to introduce, teach, and review these interconnected math topics, and to extend them into other subject areas. In addition to facts, students are learning about how those facts are connected to and used in real life. In addition to computation skills, students are learning why math matters and how to manipulate numbers to make sense of their world.

Music and art are prime examples, too. Countless are the young musicians unable to fathom their peers’ inability at fractions; they tap out the beats in 4/4 time and come up with concepts of wholes and quarters and mixed numbers. At higher levels, students learn that pitch is defined scientifically as the number of bursts of air that hit the eardrum in a single second. The patterns of those bursts of air, and the number of match-ups between the patterns of one note and the patterns of the note a fifth above it, determine whether the sound is pleasant harmony or jarring cacophony. In art, especially highly stylized arts like quilting, tiling, weaving, and stamping, symmetry and contrast are key elements in creating a pleasing design. Measurement to get the shapes the same size is crucial to success. Efficient use of materials requires an understanding of congruent shapes. Even in less-stylized art forms like painting, the use of light and shadow to create contrast are governed by laws of mathematics that can be explored and recognized as artistic in and of themselves.

This presents a problem for parents. Most adults were taught math in a very structured way. Fractions were fractions and multiplication was multiplication and geometry wasn't taught very much at all until high school. But the problems coming home from math class are not so neatly segregated. It may look like a probability lesson, but there are equivalent fractions and growing patterns there too, and the students may be asked to write an equation for it. Where are the formulas? Where are the instructions, the practice calculations, the "this is how you do it" aspect of math?

The answer is brilliant in its simplicity. The drive to explore the ideas of math comes from the children themselves. It is their creativity that conceives of the ideas and figures out how the numbers fit those ideas. It is their active brains that spot the connections and follow them to new understandings. It is their busy hands that put puzzles together, count the pieces, figure out the patterns, assign numbers to those patterns, and extend the patterns further.

Math is fun and meaningful when it’s creative and connected and everywhere.

And we all know learning is easier and better when it’s fun.


Bibliography

1. Lockhart, Paul. “A Mathematician’s Lament.” http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

2. Rosenthal, Jeffrey S. “The Magical Mathematics of Music.” +Plus Magazine, May 2005. http://plus.maths.org/issue35/features/rosenthal/index.html

3. Strauss, Rochelle. One Well: The Story of Water on Earth. Kids Can Press, 2007.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781553379546