Reflection on "Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathmatics"

Reflection on “Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathematics”

In compliance with Elaine Simmt, the author of the article Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathematics, “Mathematics has a role in citizenship education because it has the potential to help us understand our society and our role in shaping it.” As teacher candidates, it is crucial for us to understand that mathematics is more than teaching students about numeracy and looking for “right” answers. It is important to know that mathematics is all about “truth” and we must teach our citizens, our students, to “understand and critique the formatting power of mathematics in society.” There are techniques and methods that we can offer in our classes in order to educate our youth for active involvement in society. One of the techniques that I would use in my classroom is that I would attempt to provide my students with problems and questions that force them to utilize their “powers of patterning, generalizing, specializing and reasoning”. By doing so, I encourage the youth to focus on their interactions with mathematics and to look for the truth rather than looking for the “right” answer. In addition to that, our demand for more details and explanations in problems and question that we are giving our students is really essential. Teaching our young students to pose problems, explain themselves in such way that others can understand is a way to help them develop their interactions and involvements with society and community that they live in.