History of Mathematics - Yubin

The first quote that stopped me was, "The very word "liberal" implies that these arts belonged to the education of free men, not to the technological training of slaves. " (Schrader, p. 264) After the short practicum, the biggest question in my head is that how can I implement inquiry based learning in a math classroom. This quote made me rethink of what education is and what is the purpose of education. The traditional teaching method in a math classroom is efficient, and I noticed during the short practicum that time constraints is a big obstruction when delivering a lesson to students. However, traditional teaching method is far from education of "free men".  The quote that surprised me was, "Plato[...] conceived of such education as the sole occupation of the first thirty-five years of a man's life. " (Schrader, p. 264) thirty-five years of education is almost the triple amount of school years of current K-12 education system we use. I am...

I think Edna St. Vincent Millay is really showing her appreciation of Euclid's work from her poem. From what I am understanding, Edna tried to explain Euclid and his work as something that is new and incomparable to other "Beauty". Edna's definition of "Beauty" in this poem might be the foundation of things that others did not attempt or were not interested to dissect, and how Euclid was able to explain and prove geometrical shapes in his ways.  I think that Euclidean geometry has been popular to these days because it is well structured with statements of theorems followed by proofs. My personal experience with Euclidean geometry is nothing fascinating, unfortunately. I heard Euclid's name frequently while doing my undergrad studies, but I only memorized the important theorems instead of studying the "Beauty" of his work.

    As I started studying in education program and as I learn and experience more about teaching, I keep asking myself a question, so how do I make mathematics fun and engaging for students? Through 'dancing Euclidean proofs' activity, I realized that I never associated math with dancing ever before. This made me think about how I am used to traditional math classrooms and how I was reluctant to try something that I am not familiar with in a math class. I also realized that mathematics really have no boundaries of what you can do with math or what you cannot do with math. It is more about being flexible and capable enough to change one's perspective to incorporate different ideas and methods that may not be common in a math classroom. The activity also made me think about how other areas, such as music and drama, could be incorporated in a classroom and how different mathematical topics can be taught in different ways.      I personally found the 'dancing Euclid...