Qual o sentido de estudar matemática na escola? o que dizem professores e alunos

Abstract

It is not news that learning of mathematics is problematic. Thus, for quite some time, as an alternative to this difficulty, researchers in mathematics education has sought to consider the culture and the customs of different groups in the teaching of mathematics, investigating how to use this “out of school” knowledge in school teaching of mathematics, in order to make learning more interesting, useful, contextualized, critical, meaningful, etc. Hence, in the literature of this field of study it is very common to find statements that the teacher should contextualize his classes using concrete situations of life of students, that is, real problems of learner's life. While this may be a good strategy if taken to the extreme, gives the impression that only what is immediately applicable to the lives of students should be taught. This is a naive and romantic view for pedagogical practice and becomes attractive for suggesting that students would be happier, free and creative by learning in school mathematics they experience in their daily lives. It is a seductive discourse that leaves between the lines, consciously or not, that the poor student must maintain their social place. Our hypothesis is that this conception is also present in the opinion of the school community, so our goal in this work was to analyze which conception students and teachers have about the meaning (reasons) of studying mathematics at school. Therefore, we asked the subjects, students and teachers of public schools in the metropolitan region of Belém to answer the above question. The analysis show that students and teachers agree, as well as some of the researchers in mathematics education, that the sense of studying math is its immediate practical uses. On the contrary, in our argument, made in the light of the Pedagogy Historical-Critical, we argue that we do not study mathematics only to use it in immediate everyday practical activities, but as part of the process of humanization of the individual: the formation of critical citizens who are able to understand and modify the contradictions that surround them, understanding their reality in a more elaborate way, enriching its universe of meanings, going beyond the limits of direct observation.