The double standards of naming things discovered by Europeans vs non-Europeans
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This guy makes it seem as if it were a racist conspiracy. It’s not like we had the internet, mass media or even newspapers to convey how something should be called
I always hated how many theories and laws were named after the person credited with discovering them. Makes it much harder to remember and learn than a neutral term like “quadratic equation.”
But remembering the name is very important because there is a history, attitude, and subjectivity behind the genesis of these concepts and understanding the context is fundamental to truly understanding the concept…do you really even understand the concept or have you just memorized the symbols?
Learning by rote (memorizing symbols) is different from understanding theory, which is different from knowing the history. Why do you think the person who created a mathematical theorem is necessary to understand the theorem? Specifically, please.
Rote learning is muscle memory. You are gaining skill at applying a method. But you are not thinking critically. Yes if you don’t care about thinking and you just want to collect and make use of data it is not necessary to understand how that data came to be. But it is important to know the name in the sense that it is important to have the understanding that mathematical theorems come from a tradition and style of thinking that has developed and changed throughout history. It is important to emphasize the context behind these theorems to students because the majority of students already feel disconnected from the material they encounter, they learn how to memorize or do well on tests but fail at grasping the nature of the concept and thus struggle with further studies.
But like you said, learning rote is different than understanding theory. We aren’t teaching understanding of concepts with the way we present knowledge in our eduction systems…we are teaching students to just memorize. I mean our education systems are systemically oppressive in nature and meant to indoctrinate and create knowledge workers. A specific example can be the Pythagorean theorem…EVEN with its being named, the lack of context given when presenting this concept to students is why many students can struggle with further applications of it. Like what does it even mean to think geometrically? This theorem can be quite simple but many students still struggle because it is presented as some abstract formula rather than simply a way of understanding objects and relations in the world around them. So, naming is important in the sense that context is very important when it comes to understanding.
We agree on the importance of teaching concepts and theory, at least for students who have the interest/aptitude. I just don't think the history is a fundamental requirement to understanding the concepts.
I guess it depends on what you think it means to understand something