Reflection: Mathematics for Social Justice

It is important to remember what the purpose of learning math is. Unfortunately, the purpose of math, unlike the study of humanities, seems to be not clear in Western system of education.

The Greeks moved away from a very practical approach to mathematics – a subject created by the Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations as a response to their practical problems and was based on experience – to a more abstract approach. They realized that mathematics dealing with numbers and figures can be dealt with in the abstraction. In fact, they found the connection between mathematics and reasoning.

Consider the following from Plato’s Republic (Book VII):

“The knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and not of anything perishing and transient. Geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and create the sprit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down. Therefore, nothing should be more sternly laid down than the inhabitants of your fair city should by all means learn geometry.” Although this is from ancient source, one can find the similar idea for example in Morris Kline’s Mathematics for Liberal Art, a 20^th century mathematician and math educator.

The importance of this major step in advancement of mathematics should never be forgotten. It was this step that let to tremendous growth in knowledge in both math and science in sixteenth and seventeenth century.

 

Despite this, in western educational system, mathematics is often seen just as a useful means. As Thomas Teloar put it “ The honing of reasoning skills—a critical component of a liberal education—is often downplayed or completely neglected in mathematics education. The cohesive structure of mathematics is often discarded to more quickly get to the ‘useful’ results, but then these ‘useful’ results are often useless because this language of mathematics is without its cohesive structure.”

 

I  disagree with the author idea of connecting math with social justice because first, it is not the purpose of teaching math to teach social justice as it is not the purpose of, say, social sciences to teach math. Second, it could distract students from what the need to learn in a math class.