Why Meaningful Math Matters
Many of us remember a math class where we sat at our desks looking up at the all-knowing teacher as though at an oracle. He/she presented formulas and strategies on the board and then assigned us a certain number of pages and exercises to work through in our textbook, the purported Bible of mathematics. Whatever we didn't finish in class we took home to complete as homework, whether or not we truly understood what we were doing, or why we were doing it. Getting the "right" answer was the only goal, and knowing how we got there - assuming we did - was not the priority. For such learners as those described in the above scenario, math lacks meaning and relevance. And math class quickly becomes something that students dread and wish to ultimately escape from. The memorization of facts and formulas does little to imbue true understanding, and the student who gets through math class in this fashion sees little purpose for math in their lives, and even worse, usually f...
