Math Education Done Right

Why do we teach math? So we can abolish slavery, among other reasons. While that may sound outlandish, let me explain. I’ve recently seen these Instagram posts of forest homeschools demonstrating teaching practical math to build amazing woodland structures. The message goes something like, “Students can’t get into math because it’s not relevant. Here we make math education relevant by applying it directly to life!” It’s incredible to watch, and I’m cheering them on the whole way. However, if our math education stops at practical math, we leave vital soul capacities undeveloped in our students. Students need not just practical math, but theoretical math for its own sake as that leads to the good, beautiful, and true.

How should proper math education proceed?

In the early grades, students are sensory beings who build concepts from sensory impressions. So, for example, we can teach them about addition with the image of a farmer gathering in the corn harvest. Then, because he’s a generous man, he shares some with his neighbors. This is subtraction. The rest he’s going to sell at various farmers markets, equally dividing the harvest among each. This is division. The following spring, plants new seeds, and from each single kernel he gets hundreds or even thousands more. This is multiplication.

Proceeding to measurement in third and fourth grade we build amazing structures like they do in forest programs, applying our arithmetic skills to gathering wood, measuring it, cutting it, etc.

Once we approach fifth grade and beyond, however, math needs a new character. The transition starts in fifth grade when the practical math of the Babylonians and Egyptians transforms into the theoretical math of the Greeks. Aka, math for its own sake. We give examples like Carl Friedrich Gauss whose teacher asked his class to add up the numbers from 1 to 100. Gauss figured it out within minutes, reasoning that if you fold the sequence back on itself, the sum of each pair equals 101. 1 + 100, 2 + 99, 3 + 98…There are 50 such sums, and 50 * 101 = 5050. We recapitulate his discovery and many others in the 5-8 grades curricula to teach the children how to think mathematically. That’s what the Greeks were after – thinking that develops from sensory-practical to super-sensory.

But, why can’t we just stay in the practical?

Children first develop sense-based concepts from the world, and then later develop the ability to think of concepts that have no sensory correlate. For example, the two-year-old next door once looked up at a star and said to her mom, “It’s a baby sun.” That’s a beautiful example.

Starting around third grade, however, children develop the ability to think super-sensory concepts. This develops into fifth grade where we do the Number Mysteries block, 6th Grade Geometry, Middle School Algebra, and beyond. As our math education becomes increasingly super-sensory, the students learn to think as people like Gauss did, and that is just the point.

But, why super-sensory math education?

One of the biggest mistakes made in mainstream education – and this is part of the reason homeschooling is becoming so popular – is the curriculum is designed to prepare students for practical, industrial life. Such a thing is a graveyard for the soul. Grade school children are not interested in the practical lives of adults, but rather live in the present moment. They want to experience the beauty and truth of the world. We should not teach math so children become engineers, though that may be a byproduct for some. Just the same, we should not ONLY teach math so they can build forest structures, although that is super cool and awesome to do.

Why then should we teach anything in grade school? The answer is not, “To prepare them for their careers.” That’s for high school and college. Rather, the purpose of every subject we teach is to develop capacities. When we challenge them to figure out how to calculate the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 100, for example, we are liberating their thinking from the merely sense-bound. We are liberating them into pure thinking.

So, who cares?

Super-sensible thinking allows students to approach concepts not visible in the world. One example is the fact that human beings have not just a body but also a soul and a spirit. One cannot apprehend such things through senses alone, however, but only by communing with a deeper level of what we are. In 2008, I spent six weeks volunteering at a school in Ghana. After a short time, I remember thinking, “I’ve forgotten these folks are black and that I’m white.” All I saw were human beings, what we held in common. This was a super-sensible thought.

You may be seeing where this is going. This mattered during the time of Lincoln cared when many white Americans saw African slaves as subhuman. Abolition would start to change that, but it took super-sensory thinking to accomplish it. You may not know this, but long before Lincoln ascended the presidency, he spent months mastering Euclid’s geometric proofs. He did this to sharpen his thinking and his powers to prove, for example, the moral and practical wrongness of slavery. Such a thing was not yet obvious to a critical mass of free Americans.

In other words, math was critical to ending slavery in America. Tell that to the next 8th grader who asks, “So, why do we have to do this again?”

A new math education

While I don’t deny the practical, hands-on approach to math education is awesome and important, it is not enough. I understand these forest homeschools are reacting to a mainstream education that has all but killed the childhood soul for math. However, the reason for this soul-slaughter is exactly because of where the practical-only math approach inevitably leads – industrialism and materialism. What mainstream grade school curriculum planners fail to realize is that this is not the time to prepare children for the work world. It is the time to enthuse them.

For this, children need not just outer development but also inner development, for the soul and spiritual realities of life are what will enliven them for their whole lives. In that goal, proper math education is vital.

How we can help you

Enkindle Academy offers prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9. We teach all academic subjects plus fine arts, creative writing, and empowerment groups for teens. We also offer 1-on-1 tutoring on all subjects including fine arts. Visit our website for more info and for free sample lessons, and remember to subscribe for weekly updates, tips for homeschooling, and special offers.