I hear this (and functionally equivalent statements like “I’m not a math person”) with greater regularity than I would like. Got your pitchfork ready? If I’m being honest, a lot of the time I completely agree with the sentiment.

Before I continue, if you haven’t read Paul Lockharts’ essay A Mathematicians Lament, I highly recommend you read it as soon as possible. It has become an integral part of my educational philosophy.

I am certified in both secondary history and mathematics. The average history curriculum leaves tons of room for students to act as historians; researching, writing persuasive arguments, disagreeing, interpreting primary sources, and so on. Math by contrast looks like what it is, a race to complete a seemingly arbitrary checklist of standards by June. Many classes give students at least a taste of what experts in that field do. I strongly believe that math class tends to force students into acting as a mathematicians computer/calculator rather than as mathematicians.

There are likely lots of reasons for this. It’s required to be tested as math is important. However, I think the case needs to be made that its important is not in anyway tied to the concepts we teach. It’s a way to tackle problems and, at least for me, a mindset.

Growth mindset has become a buzzword in education, but math class is the one are where acting as the experts would lends so neatly to that concept. In math, a dead end can be as exciting and informative as the right path. Dead ends can reveal new areas to explore, eliminate approaches to a tricky problem, or illuminate errors in our thinking. Yet the standard course in class is to teach an algorithm, drill it until it is rote and then move on to the next. There is little room in the curriculum for discovery, error, or math.

While calculation skills are arguably essential, this is like saying a cookbook is the equivalent of a culinary arts education. Algorithms are nice because they are easily testable, but they should not be what math class is. There are countless tools that handle the algorithms for us. What these tools can’t do is think like a human. They can’t make the kind of cross-conceptual jumps that we can. We need to teach students how to think and problem solve, and the status quo curriculum isn’t cutting it.

My goal is to shift the focus of instruction as far from “just teach the algorithms” as I possibly can.