Breathe
By Luz de Teresa, Researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the UNAM and former president of the Mexican Mathematical Society.
When I was a mathematics intern I taught high school and CCH students in a private school called Centro Activo Freire (CAF). It was not easy because I came from a traditional education and the students were in full hormonal, mental, vital boiling, the teaching method included discussions, making the students think, not giving them recipes. Although mathematics and sciences in general were not the privileged subjects at CAF, years later I learned that one of my former students is a successful physicist who is dedicated to mathematics, another studied mathematics and asked me to be a synod for his master's degree and one more I met at a lunch and he is also dedicated to mathematics. Why this personal story?
The new free textbooks published by the Ministry of Public Education include in their volume for teachers' use a eulogy of Paulo Freire's pedagogical philosophy, but in practice they paradoxically move away from it, from a pedagogy that fosters critical, independent and socially transformative thinking based on scientific knowledge. However, in practice, paradoxically, they move away from it, from a pedagogy that fosters critical, independent and socially transformative thinking based on scientific knowledge. What could be more top-down and dirigiste than not offering a textbook in which students and families can study and explore on their own? The new material lacks a clear conceptualization and programmatic structure that would make it possible to understand what the objectives of the subjects studied are. Mathematics has been almost completely eliminated, and in the texts from first to sixth grade, we have found numerous and important errors in the concepts, in the explanations or in the few problems.
In this regard, a colleague told me about an imprecise definition. I decided to look it up on the Internet and the first definition that came up was from Twinkl, Wikipedia's education page. The one in the sixth grade textbook, Nuestros Saberes, is a literal copy of this "definition". The authors did not even bother to think of their own correct way of explaining things. Why are there lessons on Fractals and the Rubik's Cube? They are nice topics that can motivate and challenge a student who already knows mathematics. However, for a student who does not know them, because they have not been taught them, it is putting information in a bottomless glass, with no support to reflect, to conceptualize, to discover. They become meaningless.
In addition, they will now be totally dependent on a teacher, experienced or not, and on having a family with a smart phone and data to access complementary documents, which in some cases are, surprise! the much-maligned textbooks of the 2022-2023 cycle.
With the new textbooks, mathematics has been taken away from Mexican children, leaving them without the essential logical and conceptual tool to face the challenges of their lives in the modern era.
The new free textbooks are a betrayal of Freire.
I appreciate the discussions with Renato Iturriaga, Raúl Rojas and José María Peña on these issues.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.
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