Why teach math history?

I think integrating math history in my classroom would be a great opening to a topic or motivation to students prior to learning a topic. For example, if I was to teach a chapter on Pythagorean theorem, introducing how Pythagoras discovered the Pythagorean theorem and first used it would provide students a nice connection between history and current mathematics. I would also be interested in incorporating a small project at the end of the year providing students an opportunity to research any math history or run a math history club.

One thing that immediately grabbed my attention while reading this paper was on the last 4 objections to teaching history of mathematics: lack of time, lack of resources, lack of expertise, and lack of assessment. Given the situation public schools face with budget cuts and packed curriculums, it would be difficult to formally integrate this material in a classroom. When I was a student in high school, I felt like each year of math from grades 8 to 12, the amount of content we covered was so much that we had literally no time to lose. If we even missed a day of material, we would already be behind. This forced the teacher to shorten or skip some sections. In grade 12 however, I was in an accelerated math program which covered Pre-Calculus 12 and Calculus 12 in the same school year. We did have time for a year end project which essentially provided us an opportunity to research the history of any math topic we learned from kindergarten to grade 12. Therefore, it is possible to integrate the history of mathematics in a classroom, but this has some constraints such as student interest and time left at the end of the year. Another part that made me stop and think was when the paper mentions how history can be used to bridge math between other subjects. Seeing a connection between math and economics/physics/engineering was integral in my mathematics learning experience so I could see application and usefulness beyond the textbook. This is an extremely large and valuable benefit for students to learn math history, as it provides the opportunity for them to see how the founder of the equation saw a need and application. Towards the middle of the paper, the authors present an example of the area of triangle in Egypt dating back to 2^nd century BC. I would be interested in learning about how the Egyptians deduced or came to the discovery of such a formula. I learned about the Egyptians on a very basic level in grade 7, but never thought about the mathematics they used back then.

After reading this piece, I have been extremely motivated and excited to think about ways to integrate learning of mathematics history in my future classrooms. The last few sections suggest different forms of ways to do this such as re-enacting life of mathematicians or famous arguments in plays, view math history films, or spend some time in outdoors finding patterns in nature or architecture. These three different mediums are of great interest to me because I feel that students will be able to have fun and enjoy learning about math through other methods besides the traditional practice questions and answers.

 

Paper: John Fauvel, Jan van Maanen (eds.), History in mathematics education: the ICMI study, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2000, pp. 201-240.