Whenever I talk to students in any country about their own language and culture, they become excited. They love to explain their numerical terms as though this important area of their lives has been forbidden until now, so that it now rushes out in their explanations. This indicates to me the hidden pride students have in their own language – a pride which they are afraid to express because their own culture is often regarded by outsiders as ‘primitive’. But the students know deep down that they possess a rich heritage, and that their mathematics is not a badge of inferiority.

And so, the students really appeared to enjoy presenting these ethnomathematical lessons to the rest of the class. I believe that the opportunity to compare their own languages and mathematical systems with those of the other students was enlightening.

One important aspect of these ethnomathematical lessons which cannot appear in this booklet is the bringing in of concrete objects to share with the rest of the class. The booklet can describe the traditional money system of a culture, but it cannot capture the excitement of seeing the real traditional money in front of one’s eyes. Likewise, in the geometrical lessons, students brought in patterned bilums, photographs of house designs, reed mats with different weaving styles, etc., and these were a source of great interest.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty experienced by the students was to relate their traditional mathematics with the mathematics of the high school syllabus. All too often they became carried away with the enjoyment of explaining their own cultural mathematics, but forgot that the objective was the teaching of the western topic using the traditional mathematics, rather than an explanation of the traditional mathematics itself. I believe this may be a result of the failure of primary and secondary mathematics education in Papua New Guinea to make this connection, and as a result, students do not fully realize that the connection exists.

The exercise proved to the class that a variety of different languages or cultures within a single class should be regarded as an asset rather than a liability. The exchange of ideas about language and culture can be a source of enlightenment and of examples by which to illustrate points about the syllabus mathematics.

These lessons are only a few examples of what can be done by way of relating traditional mathematics to the western mathematics of the classroom. Creative teachers will no doubt have many other excellent ideas. The point which has been proven to the students here in Goroka is that it can be done. It is hoped that as these teachers go out to high schools around the country, they will carry with them an awareness that wherever they go, there is a rich source of traditional material which they can use to bridge the gap for school children between their traditional village life and the westernized mathematics classroom.

Raymond A. Zepp
31 July, 1993.
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