In the paper, “Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathematics,” Simmit write about the critical role mathematics education plays in the development of democratic citizens. For many people, it is not easy to make the connection between the mathematics education and the citizenship education, because they do not realize that our society fundamentally operates on mathematical ideas. As Simmit says in his paper, nearly everything we encounter in the world is linked with some numbers. Then, why do many people not able to see mathematics as the fundamental basis of our everyday lives? Simmit blames this partly on the teachers and the current mathematics education system, in which students are led to view mathematics as a set of facts that they need to get right answers to. In order to overcome these challenges, Simmit suggests three ways of teaching, which are posing problems, the demand for explanation, and mathematical conversations.
In order to educate the students to become active and democratic citizens, they would need to build on their problem solving skills that they can apply in their lives. Thus, rather than teaching the students with facts and concepts only, I would try to help them have a relational understanding of mathematics. Using the “What-If-Not” strategies that I read from the book, “Art of Problem Posing”, I will help the students to look at the mathematical concepts from different perspectives and get them used to posing problems of their own. Also, I will engage the students in my classroom through various methods so that they can participate in the class discussion actively. Through the interactions between the students and the teacher, as well as the interactions within the students, they will be able to learn how to communicate their ideas effectively with each other. Through these ways, I hope to encourage my students to learn useful skills that they can use in their lives and become active and well-informed citizens.
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