Joan

Deborah wrote,
"I know a lot of people who have acres of books without a single book on math
to be found. Or maybe a few lonely textbooks. They've got the range of human
knowledge and questioning pretty well sampled on those shelves *except* for
this gaping hole."

Well, this accurately describes our home.

I don't even know if I get what mathematics is, --a language, a philosphy, a
human endeavour, just like music, a tool--??? The math part of me seems to be
one area of which was badly damaged, if not partially destroyed by schooling.

I'd use different metaphors for each of our family, but we all have trouble with
this.
I have a math squirel living in my brain. When something mathlike wakes it up,
it hides ( but it can sometimes find) math nuts, but more often than not, it
just scurries around looking for something and anxiously leaping away from
perceived dangers.
My husband has a lead helmet which automatically locks down over his head. This
math mask has a lifelike face painted onto it, but....
Our son (13) seems still to inhabit the math part of his brain (whatever that
is). Math seems to be located on the top floor of a big house and our son runs
around inside, slamming doors against intruders and bad smells. I hope that he
will escape the familial math curse if we at least just leave him alone. I'd
like to have a few things on the shelves for him to find, though, and right now
we have nothing in this area. I don't think.

And yet,...my husband reads chess and bridge books to relax. He begins every day
by playing a few hands of bridge at the kitchen table. Isn't that math? One
adult son is a fine musician and this younger son is a computer nut, and both of
those require some kind of math sense, right?

I read Carry on, Mr. Bowditch last week and got something about the role of math
(trigonometry, right?) in navigation and all that. I was very proud of myself.

In fact, we may even be doing math all the time, but we don't recognize it as
math unless it creates math anxiety. I just don't know.

I seem unable even to write coherently about this. The point of this email was
simply to ask if there are one or two or morebooks which math folk recommend
which might gently introduce our family to the wonderful world of mathematics
(Hah!). And start a new section of our library.

Joan

P.S. I haven't introduced myself yet. I lurk here and there, and have been an
on-again-off-again subscriber at Unschooling-dotcom for a couple of years, as
I've been an on-again-off-again reader of GWS over the years. I usually mull
things over either in solitude or by talking loudly and excitedly at members of
my family about what I've been reading.
We live in Toronto, Ontario. "We" is myself, my husband and our son, who is
learning "at home and elsewhere".

[email protected]

> I don't even know if I get what mathematics is, --a language, a philosphy, a
> human endeavour, just like music, a tool--???

Music's a tool?
(I know; in some ways it serves as one.)

I think of music as a language, and as a kind of sculpture in the air.
It's a medium. (Not as compared to a small or a large, but as in a means of
expression, as language is, as painting or drawing is, as massage or dance or
architecture is.)

As English has lots of forms--simple baby talk, repetition of traditional
forms (poems, jokes, riddles, fairy tales, urban myths), communication at
higher and lower levels, discussions of God or of bugs, of pathos or
silliness, giving directions, scaring bad guys away--the whole range of
SPOKEN English can be experienced without even touching on reading and
writing.

Same with music.

George Harrison just died. As far as I know, he couldn't read music. (Maybe
he could later, but couldn't at first.) He was undoubtedly a musician. He
"composed" music, but he did it aurally and not on paper. He knew that
language as a native speaker, and he knew it well, but he was "illiterate."

There are people who understand math well and use it in their own mental
ways, but if they don't recognize the traditional format of the formula the
"real mathematicians" use as their proof and model, they're considered
"illiterate." Only with math, much more than with music or English, there
seem to be professionals and teachers who don't realize or don't acknowledge
that there is a huge world of math outside their written language for it.

There are music teachers too, though, who want NOTHING to do with any playing
by ear. They consider it gypsy lowlife nonsense for people to just make
music up, or to waste their time "playing wrong" when they should go to a
teacher and be taught JUST how to hold a guitar, or JUST how to use a violin
"right."

There are English teachers who shun street rhymes or jokes or regional
dialects in favor of "reading level" and appreciation of "good literature"
(meaning the same things the teacher was forced to read and told how to
appreciate).

Unschoolers can get away from those small, narrow, formal traditions.

Holly is really good at all kinds of mathematical thinking. She can sing
too. So I see her doing music by ear (and she's learning fiddle, and she
dinks out melodies on the piano and remembers them later, and sees the
patterns), but I don't teach her "notation." And she's started figuring out
averages in her head (because if she joins a Five Crowns game late we
"average her in") and she does tricky calculations in ways she has created on
her own. I don't teach her "notation" except what she asks for.

But the advantage with Holly, who is lately ten, is that she has NO fear
whatsoever of math or music (and in fact doesn't even see them as different,
separate things as school kids so clearly do). The patterns in numbers and
the patterns in music are both fun and sweet for her.

I was good with math but bad with notation and so was shut out of
mathematical progress and acceptance in school, and it DID scare me. I did
okay on SAT's, but creditted it to being a good guesser. I don't have a good
memory for numbers, but that doesn't keep me from figuring out fresh
questions. (I just need to write down the final figures.)

Mostly I'm thinking that the dad in question might be seeing only the written
notation of math as real math, and not the mathematical thinking and
pattern-finding.

Keith's here; he says he might have the second part of his math writing in
e-mail at work and will check today when he goes in.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Elizabeth Hill

Joan wrote:

> Well, this accurately describes our home.
>
>
> My husband has a lead helmet which automatically locks down over his
> head. This
> math mask has a lifelike face painted onto it, but....

Love the metaphors! It really clicks for me. My husband has the "lead
helmet" for arts and crafts. (Most likely due to school traumas plus
perfectionism.)

Betsy


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Cindy

Joan wrote:
>
> Deborah wrote,
> "I know a lot of people who have acres of books without a single book on math
> to be found. Or maybe a few lonely textbooks. They've got the range of human
> knowledge and questioning pretty well sampled on those shelves *except* for
> this gaping hole."
>
> Well, this accurately describes our home.
>
> I don't even know if I get what mathematics is, --a language, a philosphy, a
> human endeavour, just like music, a tool--??? The math part of me seems to be
> one area of which was badly damaged, if not partially destroyed by schooling.
>
For me it is all of the above.

It is a language that was developed by humans to help us understand our world.
It is definitely the language that is used to describe the physics of our
world. And since it was developed by humans it's definitely a human
endeavour!

It is a philosophy in its logical underpinnings. In fact Pythagorus and many
other early mathematicians were also philosophers. (I think, therefore I
am by Rene Descartes, a medieval mathematician and philosopher.)

It's also a tool. And it is related to music in many ways.

>
> I seem unable even to write coherently about this. The point of this email was
> simply to ask if there are one or two or morebooks which math folk recommend
> which might gently introduce our family to the wonderful world of mathematics
> (Hah!). And start a new section of our library.
>
I'm not sure what to recommend. I find a lot of it fascinating but I'm
also a mathematician! I learned early in my life that I thought differently
about math than those around me - I liked it!!

You could start with the history of mathematics - how it got started, how
it developed, etc. Check out Marvin Gardner's books - he writes (or wrote)
a column in Scientific American about mathematical games. In fact any
mathematical game book might be a good starting point.

Also what interests do you and your family have? Carpentry and quilting
both involve geometry for example!

Good luck and let me know if I can help in any other way.

--

Cindy Ferguson
crma@...