As a math teacher (really, as any kind of teacher) the most common questions you here are, "When will I need this?", "When am I ever going to use this?", "Why do we have to learn this?" etc. So, I started having my students complete a

"Math is Fundamental to...."

Project where they had to choose a hobby, a career/occupation, an activity, etc that they were interested in and find out the role that mathematics played.

Because I knew my high schools would discover that the fundamentals of mathematics (Algebra 1 and below) were essential to their hobby, career/occupation, interest, etc, I also had them research and reflect on the idea that learning advanced mathematics has three purposes:

1. Mathematics teaches logical thinking - as needed in all aspects of life from how to take apart a car and put it back together to making decisions.

2. Mathematics is a "game" with symbols and arbitary rules - just like English and other languages, Video games, and sports.

3 Mathematics is merely the explanation of naturally occuring phenomena with Science as the process for investigaing such phenomena - like the Golden Ratio in natural, the role of polygons in architecture, . (By "naturally" I do not mean just physical nature (trees, animals, plants, etc) around us, but everything in life: physical natural, our society, our surroundings, our world etc). Consider the Golden Ratio in nature, polygons in architecture, functions in physics and chemistry

Resources:

"Math is Fundamental to...." Project (below)
http://dialecticonline.wordpress.com/issue-3-autumn-2008/mathematics-and-intersubjectivity/

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