Colonial Math

 In week 5 we talked a lot about the future of ethnomathematics in the context of past and future colonial history. In the context of colonialism I believe it has a tendency to re-write our understanding of things to cater to it and the individuals who benefit from it. Unfortunately from what we have learned maths and ethnomathematics is not immune to colonialism. In many cases, maths nowadays for us takes the viewpoints of that of a eurocentric. To me this has made maths very black and white and not colourful. I think if it was more colourful and not so colonised, allowing different cultural maths to be present would allow us to understand it more. In my case, I have struggled with maths and believed there was only one way to do it. However, learning the history of ethnomathematics has taught me that maths comes from every corner of the world. But it does seem as thought Europe, the West, and colonialism have tried to claim maths for themselves. 

Whereas maths is both European, Indian, Mayan, etc. We see this with the history of our numerical system and the development of the Mayan’s Calendar. In my future teaching career when I am presented with teaching maths and not history, I want to open as many doors of doing maths as I can for students. In some cases, students simply cannot do the maths colonialism has taught (myself included). I want to teach the history of some aspects that surround maths. Maybe it will give more incentive to the student to learn? In addition, Ontario is in need of re-doing their maths curriculum as there seems to be a problem here in regards to learning and student involvement. I think if we incorporate ethnomathematics and other ways of learning maths we can help students of the next generation enjoy their learning more. 

Another aspect that really stuck out to me in relation to other ways of doing maths is cultures' different perspectives on failure. In maths, there is no escaping failure, however, here that is where many students tend to write off maths immediately. They are taught that if they fail once (esp in maths), they will continue to follow that current path. I have noticed in other cultures both in the present day and history that failure is a learning curve. With this it makes me think that failure is that brought on by the modern world developing with colonialism and industrialisation.