I know there are math teachers all over our country who regularly debate with their students about whether or not math is beautiful. Is there really elegance to a math solution? Artistry in a proof? Beauty in number sense? And while I am supposed to be on team math teachers (don't worry, I am most of the time), I have to admit I can see where the students are coming from. Ben Orlin describes it perfectly in his blog post The Essence of Mathematics, in One Beatles Song:
" If real math is a wild animal, then school math is its taxidermied corpse... School math presents a polished final product, and obscures the process by which it was created.... It’s a punchline without a joke.... A moral without a story."
Because of the pressures of too much curriculum, of standardized testing, and of ending up acting as social workers almost as much as teachers, we have to dilute the richness, cut through the complexities, and scrape away the beauty that is the essence of mathematics. Our students don't have the opportunity to appreciate math in its entirety.
Can you imagine teaching music by only practicing scales and never hearing or playing a whole song? Or teaching art by only using lead pencils, never paint or crayons or colour? Or literacy by only practicing letter sounds and spelling words and never reading a story? Or about animals with a taxidermied corpse, never something that moves, makes sound and breathes? That is what our math education is like. It breaks my heart.
Read Ben Orlin's post. Listen to the Beatles' song. Experience the dissonance and resolve. And keep calling for change. This isn't the fault of our teachers, it is a great institutional problem. Little steps can make a difference. So let's step together.