“Battleground Schools”, Summary/Reflection

“Battleground Schools”, by Susan Gerofsky is an interesting read that discusses what styles of mathematics are taught, and historically have been taught. Political lines have been drawn since long before we had formal education, continuing to this day, and it is unsettling to know that they clearly do not stop at the entrance to the classroom.
Most people are probably quite oblivious to the idea that there are different ways to teach mathematics. Surely, it seems quite standard to the layperson; there are numbers and letters and equations and identities and if you put them together in a classroom you get math. While this is true, most people can probably also recall different math teachers that taught them as students and the different methods that they used. Some of these teachers relied heavily on memorization work to learn concepts and, hopefully, some used different types of methods so that concepts were understood. I am sure it would be found that those exposed to the latter would have a better appreciation of the beauty of mathematics.
As stated in the essay, “mathematics education has oscillated between two poles“; that of “progressive and conservative”. These political stances are quite clear outside the North American classroom – you are either liberal or conservative, democrat or republican with little agreement between the two sides. It is upsetting to find these stances have serious impacts on a child’s learning. Gerofsky points out “few progressivists would argue against some necessary degree of fluency in basic mathematical procedures, and few conservatives would be as radical as to advocate fluency exclusively to the point where understanding would be discouraged.”
“Battleground Schools” discusses a political/educational issue where, like formal politics, few are comfortable discussing. There seems no end to the conflicting decisions that will be made regarding mathematics in the classroom. One can only hope that individual teachers are finding a balance and teaching mathematics so that not only will their students learn concepts, but they just might start to enjoy them.