The importance of Mathematics
When teaching mathematics to high school students, I have often heard them complain, saying things like, “Why do we have to learn this?” or “How will this help us after we graduate from high school?” The misconception of the importance of mathematics for high school students resides in their inability to project the skills that they use in class into real life.
The purpose of mathematics to students is for them to experience and use the concepts in everyday life. Math is useful in more career paths than you would think. Any career that involves money, or budgeting uses mathematics. You can reference www.weusemath.org to see a list of careers that use mathematics everyday.
Mathematics helps students develop critical thinking skills, the process of creating a plan to solve a large scale situational problem can be applied to variety of tasks, such as planning an event, or applying for a grant. However, students are caught up in learning standards and then being assessed on them. To many students, the purpose of math is to learn a skill that leads to a grade on a report card.
“I want my students to see that mathematics can help them better understand and describe the world around them.”
There is real-life application of almost every form of mathematics. It does not mean that every student will use every piece of mathematics that they learn, but it does mean we can show them how we can use that bit of mathematics to understand and explain something around us.
I want my students to learn to write slope-intercept form equations, but even more, I want them to see that you can use that equation to make projections in business when you know your profit per customer and a monthly loss. Then students can say, “I probably shouldn’t open this business if I need 200 customers a day to break even…”
I want them to know how to make complex ratios, but I would much prefer that they use complex ratios to help them understand how much of a pop song is the chorus. Then they can say, “Oh, that’s why the chorus gets stuck in our heads.”
I want my students to be able to solve two-step equations, but even more I would love them to use those equations to decrypt messages and then try to crack someone else’s message. Then my students can say, “Oh, that is how encryption works!” and “Algebra really is used for something!”
I implore you to show your child the true purpose of math. Help them see that math is here to help them better understand and explain the world around them.
Reference: https://blog.gradeslam.org, https://www.nctm.org/Publications/Mathematics, https://ubiquity.acm.org/article
Prepared by
Hebert Tapfuma (Mr)
(Department of Mathematics)
