The Works of Our Hands

 The Works of Our Hands

By Bobby Neal Winters

Math teachers are strange.

I wrote that because every once in a while I like to write something that no one will argue with.  Because it’s true.

We are so very strange and we will not argue with that because math teachers, above all, value the truth.

We like blackboards.  There are multiple reasons for that. One of them is that we don’t like change. We absolutely don’t. 

To quote Richard Neuhaus: “Change is bad.”

But there is a more important reason.

The teaching and learning of mathematics is a work of the hands.  It is a physical thing. 

I think I’ve “known” this for years. In grad school, some of the lecturers would talk about the “need to get your hands dirty” in doing the calculation. 

It has been something my colleagues and I have discussed among ourselves, but with my journey into woodworking it has really gelled with me: Our hands know how to do things our conscious mind does not.  The author of Psalm 137 knew this: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,let my right hand forget her cunning.”

Users of hand tools call it “muscle memory.”  I would say it’s the unconscious mind.

But I’ve seen it in other places.

When I do my Duolingo Spanish in the morning, I find my hand typing certain words before I get a chance to myself.  My left hand seems quite fond of typing aqui.

This realization is disturbing to be because of the changes technology has wrought in the way I teach.

When I started teaching, I would go into a classroom and fill up the blackboards with writing. (And I do mean blackboards. Whiteboards with markers are not the same. I’ve never picked up a piece of chalk and discovered it was empty!!)  The classroom was best when there were chalkboards on all four walls.  Sometimes the kids sprained their necks, but we all have to suffer for our art, eh?

Then came the introduction of technology into the classroom and there was encouragement--not to say pressure--to switch to something that would project onto the screen. There is a place for this, but it is a matter of finding the correct proportion.

You could make out slides.   Give your students copies of the slides.  Then as you showed the slides, they could make notes on their copies of the slides, while paying better attention to you.  

All very efficient, but not a good learning experience for the students.  Oh, they will learn very well how to just sit there and watch someone show them a presentation involving mathematics or statistics, but they will not become practitioners of the Art itself.

To learn how to do it themselves, they need to see someone performing the calculations.  They need to see the calculations being done in real time, and they need to replicate the calculations themselves.

Not only do they need to copy what the teacher is physically putting on the board, but it wouldn’t hurt them to wait a space and then recopy their notes, while trying to understand the process at their own pace.

I will say there is a place for technology in learning.  I’ve learned woodworking from watching videos, but the folks in the videos don’t just show slides stating what they are doing.  They don’t just talk about it.

They do it.

And those of us who want to learn, see it and try to replicate it as soon after watching the video as we can.  After we goof up, we can then rewatch and see what we missed.

The motto of Pittsburg State, where I teach, is “By Doing, Learn.”  

It’s a good motto.  We do give lip service to it now and then. But a lot of us take it seriously, and we ought to.

It’s a good way to learn, and we needn’t be ashamed of getting our hands dirty.  We should be proud, and we need to learn that.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.