The first thing in this article surprised me is that "a diet of vegetables and herbivorous fish may provide a ready solution for eliminating over 65 % of the pollution caused by protein production" (Renert,P21). Imagine that how much tropical forest can be saved, how much fossil fuel consumption and carbon-dioxide emission can be reduced from the saved 65% of pollution. World famine will be much less of a problem to deal with if we could think in this way to make connections between mathematics and the world problems. Follow this way of thinking we could find out that Avocado is not a Eco-friendly food since it uses too much water, while algae might be the food of the future.
Second thing surprised me is the implication of "humans' inability to feel large Numbers" and its impact on the real world. The author explained if human can not feel the sense of quantity and lack the emotion from it, the decision-making and action will be negatively impacted. Most people might not be aware of this fact thus fall victim to the negligence and poor reasoning.
I agree that teacher have the responsibility to not only teach students knowledge and skills, but also enlighten their social responsibility, reasoning and other democratic citizenship qualities. The awareness of ecological sustainability should not be neglected as well.
To address this situation, I recall an excellent example I experienced in a high school in Surrey. Math teacher asked Grade 9 students to do a group activity. The question is to estimate how much water used per day. In this activity, every member in each group needed to collect data, calculate numbers of gallons of water used at different time for various everyday activities, make line chart, compare results. Then, in a student-led discussion, students actively discussed about what behavior could cause waste of water and how to prevent it. Finally, teacher lead the discussion to a higher level which is about why. This activity is a good example of environmental education in mathematics classroom. It enhances my understanding of the article I read today, and this article make me realized that as a Math teacher we could do better to preserve environments and resources for now and future with our students.
August 8, 2021
"The binary right-or-wrong logic enacted repeatedly in school mathematical discourse presupposed absolute certainty." (p.24)
I used to think that the answer to a math problem can only be either right or wrong. Now, I don't think so. Can there be an answer other than that? Yes, of course. For example, 'undefined' is one (joking). Comparing to English writing and Art, it seems that there is no space for math students' creativity. Each of them has to get a certain same answer for a given question. The side-effect of this is that we are always trying to find that unique right answer. This is not the purpose of learning mathematics. Can math be open-ended and have multiple solutions?
For thousands of years, people have been trying to find patterns from the complex and chaotic natural environment so that we can make predictions for sidestepping the possible risks. Mathematics has been invented to benefit us. Now, it is time to use it in turn to approach issues of the environment.
Reference:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ROYpuEjXt0D9VW5eim7JozKq7D58NoH1/view
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