After reading Elaine Simmt's "Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathematics," I have more of an understanding as to the importance of mathematics in everyday life, not only for mathematicians or scientists but everyone. We have become a society of quantifiers, giving numerical values to many things in our lives (e.g. statistics, weather forecasts, hockey performance). Being able to understand a conversation or news report with these data present is becoming increasingly important for people to function in society. By showing real-life connections to math, students will be able to examine how math is presented and how to deal with those essential representations. Presenting problems to students in class would allow me to teach them not only how to solve the numerical problem but those skills applied during the solution can be transferred into their lives and applied as everyday problem-solving skills. Just as with science, I hope to encourage my students to seek answers and to explain themselves clearly. By explaining themselves, they will learn to be succinct and complete in their explanations, learning to interact with others with reasoning and solve the problems to come.
Reference
Simmt, E. (2005) Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathematics, University of Alberta.
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