Michael Gove on mathematics and civilisation

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Wednesday, 29 June 2011 12:01 AM

Full text of Michael Gove speech at the Royal Society on maths and science:

Ladies and gentleman, I feel a little nervous in these surroundings.

I am a journalist by profession, a politician by accident and a historian in my dreams.

I am, therefore, in all too many ways, poorly equipped to address an audience of the nation's most distinguished mathematicians and scientists.

But, in advancing the argument I want to make today, history is perhaps more of an aid than it might at first appear.

For some, like Karl Marx, the driving force in history was always economics.

For others, like Edward Gibbon, it was theology.

More recently some have argued that history is driven by evolutionary biology or geography or simple demography.

But the truth, as I suspect everyone in this room knows, is that history is driven, above all, by mathematics and the power it gives us to understand, predict and control the world.

The emergence of the first, truly great, Western civilization, in the scattered city states of Ancient Greece, was intimately connected with the first systematic thinking about reason, logic and number.

Although Pythagoras himself is a figure shrouded by myth, the Pythagorean revolution he and his disciples set in motion was the prelude to the astonishing flowering of classical philosophy which laid the foundations of the Western world.

On those first foundations men such as Euclid and Archimedes devised a means of making sense of the world which enabled their contemporaries, and successors, to master it. Greece bequeathed her mathematical heritage to Rome and the achievements of the Caesars, their imperial highways, feats of engineering and centralised accounts, were all the fruits of mathematical knowledge.

A Lesson integrating Math and Geology | Integration of Math and ...

These journals contain great articles, with tons of new ideas for classroom teaching and learning activities that can be accessed for free through Reed Library Article Linker and Education Research Complete (Tip: From the Reed Library homepage, choose “Get Articles” and then “Article Linker” (from the left sidebar).  Then enter what you know about an article, or even just the name of the journal or magazine it came from. Then you will see that two databases (Academic OneFile and Education Research Complete). There is a glitch in Academic OneFile so use Education Research Complete. Click on link “Journal” and then you can select year of publication and go through articles of that issue .

I came across a number of articles that described wonderful, doable activities integrating Math and Science and more. Choosing one article to write about was hard as most relevant ones were good.

It was also interesting to note that I came across many articles that followed the 5E learning cycle (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate), which is somewhat out-dated (or under-used?), but still is a powerful way to plan interesting and fun lessons, when we have nothing else to structure our lessons upon.

I chose the following article for four reasons: 1. Dinosaurs; 2. Measurement being important to both Math and Science; 3. the high level of activity the students had to carry out in the lesson; and 4. The in-built evaluation to assess student understanding that goes together with the lesson that also tests the students’ ability to apply their knowledge and skills to a different situation.

According to the authors, this is a simulating activity in which middle school students use ratios and proportions and their knowledge of geology to understand changes in scale and structure.

“Dinosaurs” is a fascinating topic in its own and when taught in an integrated Math and Science lesson, we can make sure this topic generates the motivation, focus and skill mastering we desire in our students.

According to the authors, this lesson will allow students to visualize changing scale through studying extinct organisms and gain a deeper understanding of the history of the Earth and provide an opportunity for them to use mathematics in understanding how dimensions change as scale changes.

The students use dinosaur scale models and casts of dinosaur footprints to plan and conduct an investigation to determine real-life size of a dinosaur. They will carry out a series of activities to reach this goal.