www.mathematicseducationforpeace.org

Dear Visitor,

Congratulations, and welcome! The purpose of this website is to invite you to participate in a twelve-month study, under the aegis of UNESCO, to show that an inexpensive change in emphasis can make mathematics lessons more effective and more enjoyable for both students and teachers, whilst simultaneously promoting happier relations in schools, in societies and, ultimately, even between nations.

Who are we?

We are an international group of educationalists disturbed by the decline of actual mathematical and scientific understanding of young people, by their increasing acceptance of dishonesty in private and public life, by their lack of respect for each other and their teachers, and by their increasing tendency to support the use of violence to resolve disputes.

We believe all these tendencies are encouraged when education fails to inculcate an active respect for critical, constructive and receptive discourse. Confronted by difficulties they have received no training to resolve, young people will be inclined to use violence, physical and moral, to achieve their aims.

But this does not stop in their home, or on the street. Via the process of what the Stanford University philosopher René Girard has called ‘mimetic’ duels - in which every combatant attempts, not only to match the violence of the other, but to escalate the violence even further - the results range from the scary neighbourhoods and fear-ruled ghettoes of our cities to nuclear-armed nations prepared to destroy all others rather than accept the validity of any other point of view but their own.

The choice of mathematics lessons in which to try to reverse Professor Girard’s ‘mimesis’ is prompted by three facts: that in any education system every child will learn some mathematics; that mathematics is historically and culturally neutral; and finally by the realisation that mathematicians throughout history have been inspired by their faith that lasting agreement can be found and demonstrated only through patient effort at critical, constructive, receptive argument.

This is the inspiration that you can help bring to the world’s classrooms.

The aim:

Current pedagogical praxis usually depends on a teacher attempting to communicate mathematics in stages and by various stratagems to an entire class.

This approach may be characterised as a one-to-many transfer of knowledge. One common approach is to divide the class into separate groups, selected by the teacher according to their aptitude to work on different tasks. Their rate of learning will largely depend on their teacher’s estimate of their group’s aptitude, and each group is likely to reproduce the hierarchic structure of the whole class, only on a smaller scale. [Click here to see an analysis made for the 2004 conference of the Society for Advancing Philosophical Enquiry and Reflection in Education.]

The aim of this UNESCO study is to introduce the pupils to the practice of a many-to-many transfer of knowledge. In this very different heuristic environment, the whole class will learn mathematics together by discussing the explanations in their text-books. Their rate of learning will be decided by their collective decisions.

Precisely how this simple process opens otherwise dormant neurological pathways in the mind is explained in the ‘Socrates Workbook for 9 to 19 year-olds’. [Click here to see it in English. Copies in other major languages may be downloaded from ‘Core Materials’at www.gardenofdemocracy.org ]

The teacher will ensure that all the students are prompted to contribute to the discussion, and will direct their efforts to a satisfactory conclusion. The class will soon begin to appreciate that their engagement prompts the formation in their minds of entirely new and unique neural pathways which will outlast any of the temporary associations created simply by responding to a teacher. In this way they are literally creating new knowledge unique to themselves. They are learning in addition an essential social skill: that of listening to and respecting the value of independent and diverse opinions. [Click here to see the ‘Teachers’ and Parents’ Guide’ describing the rationale of this pedagogy.]

Why should you care?

In the summer of 2010 something remarkable happened in a small town in Upper New York State. A young lady named Erica Goldson was the valedictorian, the most successful student of the final year in her high school. As is the custom, she was expected to tell her audience of teachers, parents, and her fellow students how delighted she was to have received such a fine education, one which had prepared her with the other senior students for even more success at university.

Instead, Ms Goldson first told her audience of a comment made of education in the United States ninety years before by an acerbic but widely respected chronicler named H.L. Mencken: “The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”

Ms Godson continued: “School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible. I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. I have successfully shown that I am the best slave. I have no clue about what I want to do with my life. I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.”

Others should be more than scared. The United States now spends over a trillion dollars on public school education every year. If this is the response of a hard-working young student to one of the most refined education systems in the world - which is what I believe is to be found in upper New York State - a lot of people should be very alarmed - and angry.

Why? Because this is not the whine of some spoilt Miss unhappy with her grades. Nor is this a resentful growl from Division Two, from that majority of students who have spent the past few years successfully pretending to understand, and who now know that the joke is on them: that they have been trained successfully as H.L. Mencken’s ‘standardized citizenry’. And, as usual, it would be even easier to ignore the unfortunates of Division Three at the bottom of the class, some of whom may leave school scarcely able to read or write.

Any of these might be expected to complain.

But this young lady is from the top rank, from Division One of America’s high-school students: honest, hard-working, conscientious, socially responsible, and very unusually clear-sighted. Now she realizes, not only that she has come close to losing her innocence - that her mind has been filled with other people’s ideas of what is true or false, right or wrong, leaving less room for her own; but that she may also have even lost her free-will - her ability to defend her ability to make up her own mind, for she sees herself now as having been trained to be a slave.

History cannot tell us much about our future. It does tell us that societies of slaves are not capable of democracy. They must be controlled instead by ever more laws, ever more surveillance, violence, terror, stupidity - until, inevitably, they collapse.

Should you take part?

You are invited to demonstrate that school students can learn mathematics more effectively and enjoyably simply by using more intelligently the equipment that they carry to and from school every day: their textbooks.

First they will do this collectively. Eventually they will be able to continue alone. Once they are accustomed to learn like this, both collectively and alone, they will realise that they can continue for the rest of their lives. You may then congratulate them and yourself that they are on the path to full adult emancipation.

This approach can be applied by teachers anywhere. But participation in this UNESCO study will require a high degree of determination, confidence, and competence: not only a sense of responsibility to your students in helping them to greater emotional and intellectual maturity, but also a real sense of the urgency of the moment. Recently an eminent British scientist, Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, offered his sobering assessment that the probability of humankind surviving the next century is not better than fifty percent.

The main reason is that we humans have not developed sufficient maturity to control our fears or our anger. The responsibility to teach young people greater maturity has become ours. There is no-one else to do so.

A further incentive is purely financial. The major Western nations are still spending immense sums attempting to modify one-to-many models of education to produce better results. By and large, they are failing. The solution is not to spend more money, but to spend less: on more efficient methods

If you wish to participate in this UNESCO project, you must first ensure that you have fully informed everyone who may be affected of your wish to do so, and that your superiors have agreed - in writing - that you may.

Be mindful that you will be required to spend some time every week to send a short report of your students’ reactions to this website; and at the end of the year that you will need to submit a final summary. It is also possible that you may be invited to take part in a UNESCO conference at the end of the trial.

If you still wish to take part, please send your professional profile together with a short CV to me at www.mathematicseducationforpeace.org before December 30^th, 2010.

Thank you!

Colin Hannaford,

Director IDM.