Mathematics: Always Important, Never Enough: A Christian Perspective on Mathematics and Mathematics Education

Pro Rege, Dec 2007

This article is an edited version of the keynote address delivered by Dr. Jongsma at the B.J. Haan Education Conference on Teaching Math in the Christian School, held at Dordt College on March 9, 2006, for elementary and secondary school mathematics teachers, primarily in Christian schools. The article was earlier published online in the 2006 Journal of the ACMS (http://www.acmsonline.org/Jongsma.htm).

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Mathematics: Always Important, Never Enough: A Christian Perspective on Mathematics and Mathematics Education

Mathematics: Always Important, Never Enough: A Christian Perspective on Mathematics and Mathematics Education Calvin Jongsma 0 1 Dordt College 0 1 0 1 0 A Christian Perspective on Mathematics and Mathematics Education , " Pro 1 This Feature Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at Digital Collections @ Dordt. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pro Rege by an authorized administrator of Digital Collections @ Dordt. For more information , please contact Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege Part of the Christianity Commons, Higher Education Commons, and the Mathematics Commons Recommended Citation Jongsma, Calvin (2007) "Mathematics: Always Important, Never Enough: Rege: Vol. 35: No. 4, 21 - 38. Available at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege/vol35/iss4/3 Number 4 Article 3 Editor’s Note: This article is an edited version of the keynote address delivered by Dr. Jongsma at the B.J. Haan Education Conference on Teaching Math in the Christian School, held at Dordt College on March 9, 2006, for elementary and secondary school mathematics teachers, primarily in Christian schools. The article was earlier published online in the 2006 Journal of the ACMS (http://www.acmsonline.org/Jongsma.htm). A Christian Perspective on Mathematics and Mathematics Education by Calvin Jongsma ear Anneke,1 We will soon be coming to your house for the holidays. I know you and Claire are counting the days until Christmas: how many are left? I can hardly wait, either. I think grandma told you that school is out for me now but that I have to spend some of my vacation making a speech for mathematics teachers. We will be talking about what things are important for kids to learn about mathematics. Dr. Calvin Jongsma is Professor of Mathematics at Dordt College. As you know, I think mathematics is one of the most fun things anybody can do. You probably like art better than math, but I know you enjoy working with numbers and shapes, too. That’s what mathematics is all about: finding different numbers and shapes in the world all around us, learning how they are related to each other, and figuring out good ways to use them. It’s valuable to learn how to do this because numbers and shapes help us do things that would be difficult or impossible otherwise. I know when you draw pictures you sometimes use circles and ellipses and straight lines to make people and animals and background look real. You use numbers a lot, too, whenever you count things or keep track of time or bake cookies. Which reminds me, are you making enough Christmas goodies for everyone that’s coming? Numbers and shapes are very important parts of the world God created. You can see them everywhere if you know how to look for them. People who know a lot of complicated mathematics helped to figure out how to make computers and connect them together using the internet, how to use numbers to record sounds and pictures on a DVD, and how to fly many big planes in and out of airports without having them crash into each other. We’ll soon be driving out to your house, like usual. Isn’t it amazing that while we live hundreds of miles away, we can use a map so we don’t get lost? Mathematics is important for almost everything we do these days, so everybody should learn a lot of mathematics even if it isn’t their favorite subject. Teachers can help you learn about numbers and shapes by asking you to do things with them that you enjoy. Mathematics can be learned using games and other interesting activities. Do you do any of these things in your class? To help you learn things well, teachers may sometimes give you worksheets to do, too, but I hope that’s not the only way you learn about numbers and shapes. Eeuww, boringg!! OK; it can be fun to do things over and over again when you like to do them and when they can help you learn something really well, but you do need to know why they’re important to learn. God wants us to love Him more than anything else and to care for the people around us just as we do ourselves. Learning more about the world helps us to take good care of what God made – people, animals, plants, and things. Mathematics is part of this care, but of course many times other things are more important. When you or Claire play with little Maddy to entertain her or keep her out of mischief, you’re mostly showing how much you love her, even if you’re playing with shape blocks or reading a counting book to her. The world is so full of interesting things to learn about mathematics that you could spend your whole life doing it and still not learn nearly everything. Isn’t that amazing?! I always like finding out something brand new about numbers or shapes or other kinds of things – like algebra, but that’s too complicated to explain until you get older. I get to teach a new course next semester – it’s called Number Theory – and I’m looking forward to discovering many (...truncated)


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Calvin Jongsma. Mathematics: Always Important, Never Enough: A Christian Perspective on Mathematics and Mathematics Education, Pro Rege, 2007, Volume 35, Issue 4,