The Beauty of Math

So much attention has been focused on math scores lately. It seems that every week there is a new article in the paper about the “math crisis” we are facing in Ontario that will prevent our children from competing in the world when they get older. This obsession with competition and with improving math scores essentially misses the point. Like all learning, children should come upon a discovery that lights a fire in their mind and sets them on a course of further enquiry. To make math meaningful and joyful is the solution to the so-called math “problem”. Montessori schools do not assign ratings to children in any subject area yet children begin their journey in mathematics the day they walk through the door at two years of age. One of the first presentations they are shown is the pink tower. This may look like a pile of blocks to you but in fact it is a concrete representation of the decimal system. Within the prepared environment, this concept is replicated in various materials and reinforced consistently in a concrete fashion. As the child forms themselves, math is a language they absorb from the environment. Montessori viewed all this work as a gymnasium for the mind as opposed to an output and for this single reason, it works.

Math is a system of communication that connects us to the larger world around us. That pink tower a child handled at two years of age becomes folded in to the last Great Lesson in Elementary: the Story of the Coming of Numbers. Over a couple of hours, we tell the story of how humans needed another language besides words. How they needed a language to quantify their increasing control over the world and their circumstances, to predict their harvests, locate their enemies, chart their voyages and translate their inventions into action. Once the story is told and the imagination is fired we spiral off into the mathematical operations, the arithmetic trinomial cube, the array of geometry lessons with relative ease. With the support of an engaged teacher, the excitement of their peers and the beautifully designed Montessori materials, the children master difficult concepts. When visitors come into the school, we often hear exclamations of surprise at what the children are doing “for their age”. We are asked how we “teach” children of four years how to put two addends of four digits together dynamically or how it could be that children at seven years can divide decimals in the hundredths of millions. Yet the answer is simple: math is a concept that was created so everyone could understand what was being said. If we move forward on this premise, there will be no problem too big to solve.