Assignment 3 Reflections

 My final project for this class was completed with Jasmine and was focused on the history of the Abacus; I am grateful for the unexpected richness of this topic. When Jasmine first proposed it I was skeptical – I was under the impression that the Abacus served little modern purpose and was, at best, a novelty of the past. How wrong I was! The shift in opinion I experienced was one of the most radical of the entire semester! I am now of the opinion that the abacus can and should be used more frequently to help students develop strong arithmetic skills. In particular with Mental Abacus training, research strongly suggests benefits for children developing their mental math skills, or more generally, children being introduced to the arbitrary qualities of modern mathematics. Skeltzer’s paper does an exceptional job articulating the qualities inherent in the abacus which also pervade our modern number systems.

I had not considered the possibility that some of my peers might have trauma associated with mental abacus training. In hindsight, this is not surprising – such an effective method of teaching is bound to be abused by cultures which understand mathematics as a calculative speed test. Frankly, as I reflect on this, I’m not totally convinced that speedy calculative ability has any strong correlation with (creative?) mathematic ability… it’s as if we’re going to a spelling-bee in search of the next Shakespeare!

One of the most pressing issues in modern high school classrooms is the prevalence of students with relatively weak arithmetic skills who depend heavily on calculators for basic calculations. As a future teacher, I wonder how the Abacus might help me meet these students ‘where they’re at’. Although mental abacus training is unrealistic, there is the possibility that teaching students the basics of using physical abaci would help them to develop arithmetic skills in parallel with curricular skills. One might accomplish this simply by having a variety of abaci in one’s classroom. Much like a ‘Rubiks Cube’ or other physical math puzzles / objects, abaci might also provide students with something to keep their hands busy.

Lastly, this presentation was the first time I felt activity and lecture was correctly balanced! This has been challenging for me, so it was nice to see an appropriate balance manifest for my last presentation of the semester.