Teaching Numeracy Book Study-Preface & Intro

I am partaking in a book study over at the Math Coach’s Corner on the book Teaching Numeracy: 9 Critical Habits to Ignite Mathematical Thinking by Margie Pearse and K.M. Walton.  I always have intentions of reading a new book during the summer, but summertime is my busy time for doing teacher trainings so my good intentions rarely come to fruition.  I am hoping this book study will help me out.  So far we have read the Foreword (by Arthur Hyde), Preface, and Introduction.  Below are my thoughts for the first week, but if you want to join in, all you need to do is start reading and post comments on her blog posts for the book study:

My main thought when reading the Preface & Intro was; “How do we help society realize that being ‘numerate’ is equally as important as being literate?” Too many people think it is acceptable, even cool, to say they were never good at math (even some teachers). Yet they would never say that about reading. Mathematics is the gatekeeper for too many pathways in our society…want to be a nurse, you need mathematics; want to be in IT, you need mathematics; want to go to college, you need mathematics. In the Foreword by Arthur Hyde, he tells the story of his daughter whose college path required only the most basic math class and that could have stopped her from going any further.

My quote was from the Introduction: “In an age dominated by numbers, individuals who lack the ability to think and reason numerically can neither make wise decisions nor participate fully in civic life (Shoenfeld, 1994). I think the main reason people feel it is okay to be bad at math is because they think math is arithmetic (as mentioned in the Foreword) and you can use calculators to help you do arithmetic. But calculators can’t do mathematics…only humans can. We need to change people’s view of what mathematics entails in order for us to change the stigma that it is okay to be bad at math.