#math education

Are you an aspiring math major, but don't know what your field of study should be? Consider using this flow chart to help determine what you should focus on!

My friend Demara is a math teacher, tutor, and community organizer specializing in teaching to people's neurodiversity and educational trauma. Just from shooting the shit about what she does and how she teaches, I've started to understand and be able to move past dysgraphia and dyscalculia challenges around numbers that held me back my entire life and particularly as a medic

She's been tutoring for kids and adults on the side of being a full time math teacher for years. She recently stepped away from her day job to be able to focus on building a tutoring network online and in the DC area that actually helps people like us, at a sliding scale rate ($10-50/hr)

Apparently this spawns from the idea that learning shouldn't be pure memorization. I have no idea how that idea got bastardized into "students should not be expected to memorize anything, ever", but here we are.

I have no idea how kids are meant to get through higher level math if they can't multiply/divide automatically...

And to be fair, I don't know why the university mandates calculus as a GE. Is it that hard? No. Not really. Like... most things in anyone's major are going to be harder.

But, what does a history major need with calculus?

It's not a relevant skill, and especially the way I've seen it taught, it's not shown as particularly interesting. It's taught as calculations, to the point where I've met well-meaning people that ask if I've calculated anything interesting recently because they have not even the slightest knowledge of what mathematics becomes. They aren't taught ideas. They are taught disconnected formulas and expected to apply them blindly. And then what happens is that without a fundamental understanding, they get lost on edge cases. Not because they're bad at math. Though the more clever ones can figure out edge cases, the real problem is the lesson is this large task of memorisation that misses this edge case. So they feel like math sucks. And have not the slightest idea what it is about.

And how would they? Math teaching... isn't great. I had a lot of awesome teachers as I went higher into mathematics, but very few ones in lower mathematics. This isn't just a problem with mathematics. Basically any GE is a massive class with hundreds of students, most of which are studying things completely orthogonal to the class and have next to no interest in them. And the only way to grade such a large class is by rote, oversimplified, contrived tasks. I wouldn't want to teach a GE for that reason. I imagine a lot of professors feel the same way.

There's a few alternative classes they can take instead of calculus. I happened to see that there's an introduction to logic there on the list and I decided to nose in and see what was being taught, and it was a rudimentary introduction to proofs and sentential logic, along with some fallacies and whatnot. Some amount of hand-waviness was going on but it seemed a much better beginning to mathematics than calculus. Calculus is a very important foundation to engineers and physicists and anyone going into stem, but logic feels... really fundamental? Like, just basic logical reasoning, that we do every day, formalised just a bit. It gives the students confidence in their skills, and a good foundation for the formalisation required for mathematics. And it felt more creative and less rote. And probably more connected to reality than calculus. And even if I don't like applications... a lot of people do. A lot of credit needs to go to the professor. But it did serve as an example that a large GE class can be interesting. And that calculus is a terrible travesty we inflict on future historians.

An example would be using statistics to look at what "fairness" means.

I'll list some of my known blind spots here as an example, and try to update this post with what I already have covered later on. But to start with, here's my known blind spots:

Indigenous American history and culture (not limited to the US or even the Northern hemisphere to be clear)

African/African-American history and culture

LGBTQIA+ (I can't remember all the letters rn despite being nonbinary, I'm sorry. I promise it's not an intentional slight) history

Asian/Asian American history and culture

Learning languages other than english (and for that matter, channels that would teach those that live here but can't speak it the language as well). I have a few channels and languages archived already but I don't know what the best channels for learning each language are.

Children's education (I realized so many months into this project that nearly all of what I've got so far is more adult-oriented education)

History and culture related to religions that aren't Christianity (sorry left-wing Christians, I'm not saying your beliefs aren't important. But they aren't under threat to nearly the same extent here). This doesn't have to specifically be channels for major religions btw. "Pagan" religions like Wicca and witchcraft are welcome suggestions as well. Just make sure it isn't literal cults that brainwash their followers.

History and culture related to disability and neurodiversity (ironically I am disabled and autistic, but I'm not great at finding channels related to those things lol)

Science that isn't related to evolution, biology, geology, or nuclear power (what can I say, Kyle Hill makes great videos).

Mathematics (kill me. But distaste aside, it's still important).

Education related to art of all kinds, and the history thereof.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I'm sure I'll run out of space on my external HDD before I can cover all these topics, so please understand that history, culture and the sciences are my main priorities, but other suggestions will still be welcomed.

Oh and before I forget, pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology channels are NOT welcome. I go out of my way to find channels that debunk those things as is. And obviously channels that promote hate and pseudohistory and conspiracism aren't welcome either.

P.S. I strongly encourage those who have the time and resources to create their own digital archives to do so as well. If I'm the only one doing this, we're cooked. Specialize if you want, you make the rules for your own digital archive. Point is we need to make sure that no matter what happens, people can educate themselves and their children if need be.