Conversation with a friend who was too tired to go this route, but led to some interesting thoughts of mine.
Discussing math, which she hates, and I have come to like. Can't do it, still suck at it, but from a theoretical standpoint, math has become pretty cool. I wish I'd understood a few things about math when I was younger:
- Numbers are just representational. They don't actually exist. Sort of like time, calendars, and morals. They are things we invented and live by, but they don't actually exist in real life. Numbers aren't actual things, they represent things.
- Because numbers simply are representations, they are much more malleable than I believed when I was younger. I believed that numbers were hard concrete things that required ridiculous steps that I didn't understand in order to solve problems that had no basis in life. They were just things that had to be done, either the right way or wrong way, and for some reason my grades relied on them. Sure, maybe I would use this stuff when I went to the store, and grew up to have to figure out stocks or something, and buy a house, but other than that, these school math problems had little bearing on life. you solve the problem correctly, showing your work, or you don't and everybody gets mad at you. That was my experience with math. No wonder I hated it! But numbers are just representations of things. And that realization opened up a whole world of what math could be used for.
- Math is metaphor. Actually, math puts numerical representations to metaphorical things. I like metaphor. I like the bible for its amazing metaphors. Once I realized this, I realized that life is actually mostly mathematical. Relationships with people, the way we serendipitously have coincidences happen, the way we think and operate - it all actually is mathematical formula. We may not know the formula, may not be able to solve it, but if we were able to see the really really big picture, we could potentially put numbers to it all and solve big human behavior questions. Also, math is HARD BECAUSE math puts numbers to metaphor. Metaphors aren't meant to be quantified, they're meant to be felt and experienced. Math tries to force metaphor onto paper and stay still long enough to be solved. But that's the game of it. That's the fun of it. That's how we got to the moon, because people were willing to figure out what those numbers were that could make it possible.
- Math is a big logic puzzle. I like logic puzzles. I'm not great at them all of the time, but I enjoy them. Math - especially higher math - combines philosophy with science and puts it into a logic puzzle with representational numbers and letters. Then the ppl who really like doing that stuff figure it out.
I live in the world of taking feelings and experiences and putting words, movement, and action to them. I live in the world of theatre, music, and literature. I take the metaphor and expand them so they become visible, secondary metaphors through the experiences of fictional characters, music, and dance. But that's because that's where my brain sits. I'm happy there, it's natural there, and not everyone can do it. Mathematicians will take those same things and put numbers to them. It's happy for them, it's natural, and not everyone can do it.
Now I no longer fear math, and in fact actually love it. I had to step away from the judgmental world of school and fear of my parent's reactions to my grades. I agree basic math should be taught so that children can do the going to the store, buying things, buying a house, and all the basic things a human in this society needs to understand. But I also believe that the magic of math should be taught much, much younger. The philosophy of math should be brought into the very beginning of teaching. The way that numbers can be manipulated, can shift and change. They're not the hard-against-the-wall things that I thought they were as a kid when I couldn't do long division. Boy, I did not understand long division at all. I followed the formula, but the "why" of it was an absolute mystery to me. And what's crazy, I thought I knew the "why". I thought it was because math was something that somebody just had to understand in order to be a functional human being. Again, hard wall.
I didn't realize that math was actually filled with curiosity, and mistakes, and people trying to put reason to the things they see. I didn't realize that even the most basic multiplication formula wasn't invented just to torture kids, it was somebody realizing that there must be a faster way to do this thing they were struggling to do - and they figured it out. They figured out a faster way to multiply. An easier way to conceive of these representational numbers, so that they could then go on to grasp bigger things.
Amazing. Because I do that with words. And with theatre. I find better ways to bring ideas to life, to let them ring and register with audiences in ways that they haven't experienced before. To change people.
Now. I sucked at math. I still suck at math. I used to hate math because I sucked at it. Now I like it even though I suck at it. I tell kids when I teach them math (which isn't often) that it really is okay to not know the answer, or to be struggling with the problem. That math is actually about the process of figuring it out. The cool thing with math is at the end of the day, especially simpler math, you do get to know if your process worked or not. In life, we don't get that same luxury.
The kids who will be good at math need to be exposed to it because they will find it a natural home. The others? I wish we could infuse a little more magic and wonder and curiosity into teaching math, because that's what it is. Yeah, you still gotta know basic addition subtraction multiplication and whatnot. You may or may not need to ever know how to calculate a triangle's edges.
But math has some degree of magic in it. And after all, it's the process that counts.
Here's an unsolved math problem for the math geeks:
Good luck with that one.
