On native mathematics

[Rudy Troike]

When my wife, Muriel Saville-Troike, was working on developing Navajo
curriculum materials for a bilingual kindergarten program some years ago,
she discovered an interesting thing. Although Plato thought that the
concept of the triangle was universal and eternal (and some modern
cognitive scientists have argued as much), it turned out that Navajo
speakers did not have a term for the concept, a point which created some
problems of comparison across sites where the material was being piloted,
since individual teachers in different places made up different terms.
However, even the children already did have a term for the hexagon -- the
shape of traditional Navajo hogans -- while this term is unfamiliar or
unknown to most English speakers (not only children!).

NB: I would bet that those involved in the Albuquerque program know
nothing about the existence of this bilingual kindergarten material,
sad to say.

      Rudy Troike