Indigenous math

[Richard Zane Smith]

Rudy and Mia raise issues 
the public schools somehow haven't slowed down enought to consider. 
I think Western math ,like everything else is becoming so "specialized"
that today it creates its own wake of ignorance.
   Have you ever watched an Asian store cleric using an abacus?
Compare that image to our typical Walmart clerk on the computer.
Its obvious which one is actually using math
and its even more obvious when the computer fails.
Computers are excellent tools,but mass dependance upon them to 
"do our thinking" can create a very fragile culture of its own.
Some people still see indigenous cultures as merely offering spice, color
and frybread. It still hasn't dawned on the mainstream american,that  keys to  
survival may lie within the enduring cultures it has sought to replace.
Richard



> 
> From: Rudy Troike <rtroike at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>
> Date: 2006/04/22 Sat AM 04:16:21 CDT
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: [ILAT] Indigenous math
> 
> This is in response to Mia's note on native math. While it does not
> necessarily
> involve native language in computing (though it might), it does reveal the
> importance of her point about math being culturally embedded, and 
relevant.
> 
> One of my favorite stories is from Barney Old Coyote, who told me of 
visiting
> an elementary school with a number of Crow youngsters attending. He was 
in
> a third-grade class, and the teacher was demonstrating how miserable the
> Crow students' math skills were, by showing that they could not do first-
grade
> arithmetic problems of adding apples and oranges. Barney Old Coyote 
asked the
> teacher if he could take over the class for a few minutes to try out
> something,
> and the teacher agreed. So he asked the class if anyone could compute the 
odds
> in a stick-ball game, giving them the parameters. The Crow students 
quickly
> responded to a number of these, computing the odds entirely in their 
heads
> with amazing speed. Their Anglo peer hadn't a clue as to how to do this, 
and
> were astounded at their classmates' mathematical skill, as was the teacher,
> who had no idea that they could do this.
> 
> Culturally-embedded and relevant skills like this, not just in math, often
> exist but are not recognized by the formal educational curriculum, nor by
> teachers trained only to recognize and teach that, and hence are not 
rewarded
> nor built upon for more advanced development. Relevant here is Perry 
Gilmore's
> famous example of "Spelling Mississippi", in which she found that Black 
teen-
> age girls in Philadelphia, who were failing abysmally in spelling in class,
> during their lunch hour were doing jump-rope in which they were regularly
> spelling out complicated words using a semi-special vocabulary for letter-
> names (e.g. s = "crooked letter"), but the teachers were totally unaware that
> this activity was going on, and hence were not able to harness this 
knowledge
> to enhance classroom learning.
> 
> Motivation is also sometimes relevant, as when rural development workers 
in
> West Africa found that attempts to teach basic math to farmers was a total
> failure, until they hit on the fact that the farmers were regularly being
> ripped off by middlemen to whom they sold their produce, who gave them 
false
> information on the weights of their goods. Once they realized that a 
knowledge
> of numbers would enable them to protect their interests, they became 
highly
> motivated to learn.
> 
> On the other hand, people can also enjoy the simple intellectual pleasures
> of abstract math, and to say that native people can't do this is to greatly
> underestimate them. I recall a story by someone who was teaching some 
mid-
> level abstract math to some rural Mayan speakers, and found that they
> enjoyed remaining in the classroom after school to challenge one another
> with math computation problems, which they treated as an intellectual 
game.
> 
>     Rudy Troike
>     University of Arizona
>     Department of English
> 

Richard Zane Smith
18474 S.Cayuga Rd.
Wyandotte Oklahoma
                                  74370