Mathematical power to the people: Lessons from Global Math Week

Recently, Jim Tanton (@jamestanton) emailed the Global Math Project ambassadors:

“G’Day Dear Ambassadors and Ambassadors-to-be:
We’re still collating data from the grand week of GMW2017 and putting together a report for one and all to see. As soon as it is ready we’ll make sure one and all sees!

But just so you know, we are still receiving registrations each day (with an alleged student count of 2.8 million at present) and Scolab’s web app is receiving between 8,000 and 15,000 hits each day. I guess we have proved we have traction!
It has been pointed out to us by some key-people in US mathematics education that we seem to have done two important things:

1. We have proved that there is a critical mass of teachers who want open mathematics conversations about mathematics with their students. Even with solid curricula in hand, there is a demand for more.

2. Mathematics creation is often seen as only for those in a “specialized club” of sorts and that much of mathematics feels out of reach. GMP seems to have opened a door to show that everyone really is welcome, that mathematics is not an exclusive club”.

 

Seems to me there is something else going on here, too – something I find hard to pin down, yet keeps coming to mind through the examples of teacher and parent stories where they themselves tell how the scales dropped from their eyes, and how they were, for the first time ever, enlightened as to the simple nature of place value, and the previously mysterious, yet actually very simple, process of long division.

This has the flavor, to me of Piper Harron’s call of  :

 

I believe the Global Math Week helped, and continues to help, teachers, parents and students, claim mathematical power for themselves: their minds are able to make sense of different number bases, of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, long division, and algebra.  Everyone involved seems to have experienced a freedom from reliance on mathematical experts, and authoritative (and often incomprehensible) textbooks. Why, this stuff is so simple, and such fun , you can figure it out yourself. And it makes sense!

I would dearly love to see Piper Harron, and like-minded mathematicians, link up with Jim Tanton and the Global Math Project crew to help continue this deep journey into providing all people, of all ages, with mathematical power, the way we saw happen in the week of October 10, 2017.

The dam has burst, the flood gates are open – a wave of joyous, comprehensible mathematics is sweeping the world.