Why Should We Learn History of Mathematics?

Nowdays many people assumed that history is not really important. Actually, there so many people are not interested to learn history. They don’t realize that history has a strong relation with human. History is like the chronicle of life. It is happen everyday. Even we have made it by ourselves. We made it yesterday, we make it today and we will make it too tomorrow.

So why should we learn history?

Generally, we learn history to increase our knowledge about what had happened in the past. By knowing the history, we can take some moral valued included in that story. History is not only important for social subject. It also important for mathematicians. They who had a taught that mathematics is only about calculating numbers and numbers are false. As a mathematicians, we need to know about the history of inventions of the formula used in mathematics. We need to know who is the inventor and how were they struggling to find that formula or theorem?

Hmm…

That’s why we have to learn about the history of mathematics. It is to prepare ourselves to be a good mathematicians. Especially if we want to be a future teacher. It will help us to increase our students’ understanding about our materials. When they feel so bored, we can make them enjoy the lesson by telling them the story behind the invention. They will be more attracted.

So, learning history is really important and we should do! J

How Could You Use Telling Story in Lesson?

There are many kinds of students. Some are diligent, some are lazy, even stupid and stubborn. As a teacher, you often find some difficulties to make them understand about the material. You can not just underestimate their potential in studying. All you have to do is find an interesting way to make them attractive in learning process and make them have a good understanding about the materials.

Using telling story is a kind of a good solution to overcome this problem. Imagine that you are a teacher of a junior high school. One day you have to give a lesson to a class whose students are not interested to your material.

But, how could you use this methods?

First you have to do is make them attracted to you. You can use any strategy to catch their attention. One you have their focus of attention, you can continue giving them a kind of story related to the material. For example: if you are in a situation of teaching Pythagorean theorem, you can choose a student as the inventor of this theorem. Then, you may ask him/her to pretend as Pythagoras.

After that, you can start telling them the history of this invention. It will be better if you insert some moral values in your story. You can give any motivations using your own words. Like: “Oh my students, don’t you wanna be a person like Pythagoras?”. Or, “Look! He’s very clever right? Don’t you wanna be like him?”, it can be “If you are as smart as Pythagoras, your name will be as adorable as his”.

When you say those words, try to convince themselves that they can be a person like Pythagoras. It can be a reinforcement for those lazy students. They can motivate themselves to be more diligent and try to give more attention to the material. Telling story not only give them motivation or reinforcement, but also give them new knowledge. It can be an enrichment and a joyful story that can be applied in their daily life.