Reflection of Ethno Mathematics on 29th Mei 2013

            For the last meeting in this semester, Mr Marsigit said about his education strategy. He told us that he used student center. But he didn’t use student center every time and always be the one in the lesson, because he would consider it base on the condition. Student center was on the same way with contractifism. And CTL is including in contractifism. Mr Marsigit also used CTL in his lesson, but not CTL in the common, not CTL that had 7 steps. But CTL that was used was CTL that more closed to the definition of ontology that CTL has 2 components: apreseption and preparation. When peoples did the preparations, they would need connection with the same thing before. But people didn’t thing about something if they were isolated. And peoples couldn’t life if they were isolated. They needed to make relationship with others. He, Mr Marsigit developed method of lesson by using web and blog. Although students and the teacher couldn’t meet each other, but they could still have studies.  A student could study every time, where ever and everywhere. That paradigm would be developed by Mr Marsigit.

            Students could stand alone if they were given a freedom of giving opinion. The differences of their statements were permitted as long as it didn’t make a break, instead it was allowed. Mr Marsigit didn’t want knowledge of the teacher and the students were same. He said that it isn’t a problem if students are cleverer then teachers. If it was true, teachers should be proud with them and happy. Wasn’t easy for teachers that conventional to make a innovation. Except if they were given guidance by The Lord. Mr Marsigit given us a story that he get good experience in the England. There, he seen that student center come from the mindset of the students.

            Ethno mathematics could be defined by the structure of language. Ethno was a culture in the same places and came from a long time ago. And mathematics was mathematics, language of the live. From this definition, it didn’t show us that ethno mathematics was in the place of studies. So ethno mathematics was still neutral and could be included in pure mathematics. Mathematics was grown from culture of mathematics and also from the human in the long time ago. This thing would always develop until there is not a human in this world.  

            Ethno mathematics could be differenced into two parts. They were ethno mathematics this era and ethno mathematics previously. It means that ethno mathematics had three elements, civil, history, and mathematics. The idea or concepts of civil in the long time ago could be a base of ethno mathematics. And ethno mathematics was also a history moreover in mathematics history. So, pure mathematics could use ethno mathematics as an inspiration for making a development for mathematics.

            From reverence, ethno mathematics was divided into some part. They were discovery, mindset, value of culture, and ethno mathematics also as knowledge. Emanuel Kahan said that knowledge is synthetic appriory. Base on it, pure mathematics was not knowledge because it was only appriory. The value was coming from some ideas not from the experiences. Synthetic was come from the experiences and pure mathematics only formed by the ideas or we called it analytic appriory. The good knowledge was built by experiences. And also, intuitive appeared from the experiences. The result of intuitive was categories. From categories made a regulation. From categories peoples could make good observation because it was responsible observation.

            Ethno mathematics could be called as knowledge if it was synthetic appriory. Appriory was thinking and synthetic was experiences. Ethno mathematics would be very useful if it had strong appriory from its experiences. And it would become good knowledge if had categories. Categories could be found when there was observation. From experiences people long time ago, we had to take some lesson and the other good thing. The research in Borobudur could be called as ethno mathematics if it was useful and we could be called as researcher. But, to be a researcher we had to make a relationship with professor because we could get their help easier. Our research would be known as knowledge if it had been international journal.

            In fact, knowledge had object, so do ethno mathematics. And every object had to have dimensions, strong dimension or weak dimension. It was influenced by the culture. The object of ethno mathematics was the thinking of civil about something but in the cultural context. For the example, actually Borobudur temple had many objects that could be found by us. But for finding it, we needed big power and hard work. The other example was about Sekaten in Java culture. But this research needed interview.

            We had to know about the position of ethno mathematics in our life and in our lesson. Ethno mathematics was as the way of finding good lesson and some innovation of lessoning. With ethno mathematics a teacher could make a attractive lesson so that his/her students would be happy with his/her class. For elementary school, teachers should know about what is mathematics in that grade. Mathematics in that level was a game and that made the students happy. In this level, mathematics was not about definition and not only about counting with formula that made student so confused.

            The problem in our school and in our education wasn’t from the students, but it came from the older people, as the teachers, parents and government that made rule. Here, students were as victims. Mathematics was not only on counting and definition. But mathematics was an intuition of students that could build their experiences. So the smart students were students that had a lot of experiences.

            Ethno mathematic was providing a lot of education innovation. So, now we only could wait for the action of teachers. In curriculum, a teacher had three choices. There were as worker, participation and the last as developer. If teacher already used ethno mathematics in their class, every student should be happy because it would be attractive. The requirement of teacher as developer was he/she could develop curriculum by his/herself. And also teachers should become researcher. Because in the class teacher had object that could be observed, it was students.

            The teachers as researcher had to 2 condition, that were experiences, and reference. Function of reflection was for making students become smarter. If they didn’t read many books, they didn’t know where they were standing. They didn’t know their condition. A research was like water that overflow from the container. Container was our mind and water was our knowledge. If our container was not full, how we could make a research. Now, the problem was haw we made our container was full. The only thing we could do was by reading and finding new experiences.