AIMS OF TEACHING MATHEMATICS
Those who are concerned with the teaching of mathematics are confronted at the very outset by these questions:
What subject matter shall be taught ?
Why should we teach this subject matter? and
How should this subject matter be taught?
Before knowing what is to teach, and how to teach it, the teacher should certainly know why mathematics be taught in schools. Hence, a consideration of the aims of teaching mathematics is fundamental.
The aims of teaching mathematics determine the content of the curriculum. They decide the methods of instruction and the techniques of teaching. Without the guidance of aims, teaching is apt to be routine and formal; and sometimes, it may even lead to results that are detrimental. The aims of teaching also provide the criteria for gauging pupil achievement and the success of educational efforts. In otherwords there is a triangular relationship between aims and purposes, curriculum, and the methods and techniques of teaching. It may be schematically represented as follows.
The General and Specific aims
The teaching of mathematics should be governed by specific aims which conform to the general aims of education. The general aims of secondary education are well formulated in the Mudaliar Report “with reference to these broad categories – the training of character to to fit the students to participate creatively as citizens in the emerging democratic social order; improvement of their practical and vocational efficiency so that they may play their part in building up the economic prosperity of their country; and the development of their literary, artistic and cultural interests, which are accessory for self-expression and for the full develpoment of the human personality, without which a living national culture cannot come into being”. Report of the Secondary Education Commission. P.23. It implies that education should not only facilitate ‘the full development of the human personality’ but also assist in perpetuating, improving and realizing the significant ideals of democracy, which India has accepted as her form of government and also as ‘a way of life.’
In a democratic society the system of education should provide each individual opportunity to acquire the information and to develop the attitudes and habits of thinking needed to cope with a changing world education should help achieve competence to make wise decisions in novel and crucial situations.
Schools should impart knowledge, develop abilities and skills, and promote those attitudes and behavior patterns congenial for a harmonious life in society. Pupils should be made familiar with social realities and enable to participate effectively in all life- activities.
In conformity with the general aims of a democratic education, people have all sorts of aims in teaching mathematics. In consequence, an ordinary teacher is left without guidance that is definite enough to be of value. Hence, only a few dominating aims or objectives of teaching mathematics are given below. The specific aims of teaching mathematics are given below.
1. To enable the pupils to learn the technique of problem -solving.
2. To develop functional thinking in them
3. To develop skill in the use of mathematical language in understanding the world about
them
4. To develop mathematical skills, understanding and attitudes necessary to solve the
quantitative problems by them in their immediate and anticipated environment.
Every subject in the curriculum has a few aims. Generally, the aims of one subject are applicable to that specific field but also to other branches of learning. However the aims enumerated above, though seems to be general in nature are unique, and can pertain only to the field of mathematics. No other subject could claim them. The nature of mathematics justifies this statement.
The Nature of Mathematics
Mathematics is defined as “the science of serial, spatial, quantitative and magnitudinal relations; the science of order”. Merio pieri is responsible for the statement that” mathematics is a hypothetico-deductive system. Benjamin Pierce defines mathematics as “the science which draws necessary conclusions”. Bertrand Russell “as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true”. All these definitions are significant in their own way. They imply two distinct phases of the subject matter- utilitarian and abstract, which are vitally important from several considerations.
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