The Gutenberg printing press was revolutionary because it provided a faster way to share words. In turn, these words and how they were structured were representations of ideas used to make sense of the world around us.
Math is a language with words and other symbols that also makes sense of the world around us. We consume and know more math than we realize or allow ourselves credit for.
When buying the latest iteration of an iPhone, we may call forth algebra. How much will you pay if you buy an iPhone for $1000 and pay $80 a month for service? Well, that depends on how many months you will use this iteration before moving on to the next iPhone. The number of months is unknown so algebra gives us a symbol to represent this unknown number of months, x (or n or whichever letter you want).
Just as there is formal and informal English (or other language), we can engage algebra formally or informally. You don’t need to write an equation such as y = 1000 + 80x to figure out how much you will pay. You can do this informally, compute 80 times 10 months + 1000 on the calculator. Then try 80 times 12 months etc.
Math provides us a means of organizing and communicating ideas that involve quantities like the total cost for buying an iPhone.
The difficulty in learning math is that it is often taught out of context, like a secret code. In contrast, a major emphasis in reading is comprehension through meaning, such as activating prior knowledge (see below).
In fact, math absolutely can be taught by activating prior knowledge. An approach is to work from where the student is and move towards the “mathy” way of doing a problem.
Without meaning, students are mindlessly following steps, not closer to making sense of the aspects of the world that involve numbers.
