Math and The Environment - More than just "Core Competencies" (Entrance Slip - Climate Strike)

The paragraph that made me stop and think is: 

"Integrating the environment into the discourse of the mathematics classroom signals the possibility of a more genuine mathematics education - one that is not so much about acquiring certain competencies but about noticing the world differently, seeing proportional reasoning in multiple contexts, making connections, and moving to ethical action as a result of increased awareness"

It made me stop because it resonates strongly with my values and opinions about education. It is about noticing the world differently. Because of how rapidly the world is changing and how rapidly data is growing there is little use in learning "certain competencies." Who could ever predict what the best competencies would be for life 15 years from now? So the second part of the paragraph, "noticing the world differently... multiple contexts, making connections" becomes extremely valuable. This is written in the context of "ethical action" and specifically sustainability, but I believe this sort of learning is essential for knowing anything of use in the future. 

I found the sentence, "And since values themselves cannot be measured, mathematics comes to be regarded as value-free," to be of interest, because of the notion that math is completely neutral on values is something I disagree with. As a topic of interest to people, it inherently has human values tied to it, especially in the classroom. The comment is made in the article, referring to math without specific outcomes or values, and its use in the classroom is worth considering. How can we change the landscape of math education so that it does not appear to be "value-free?"

"... teachers and students search for the right mathematics required to make sense of real-life problems..." 

This quote, I believe, is very telling about the direction that education will go in the coming decades. This especially applies to global issues such as ecological change. 

Overall, I agree with a lot of what is said by Renert about how math education needs to change to support sustainability. Yes, we should make examples and problems in math class more open-ended and inquiry-based, and focus them on important issues including sustainability. 

But at that point, my disagreements come up: the aversion to pessimism that he opens with in the last section of the article, and his limited scope on what issues and what fields should be involved. It is my opinion that for decades the world has looked to science and technology to say "hey, we found a solution to climate change that won't require you to change your lifestyle." That sort of optimism is counter-productive. And that ties into my other issue with this article: it is more than just math and science and it is more than just the environment (Renert begins to touch on this at the end with Transdisciplinary teaching, but I feel like that should have been the whole focus). All of education as a discipline needs to react to huge shifts in global forces, including climate change, but also automation, population growth, unprecedented amounts of data collection and processing, digital security, and AI, for example. Students need to be prepared for a world that has failed to respond to climate change, while also addressing all of these issues. It won't be science that saves us from these things, rather it would have to be fundamental in world politics and social philosophy. 

Math is actually situated in a great place to address this: the quote above, about making sense of real-life problems is where math education needs to be. Technology, including Wolfram's Mathematica, and various AI developed by IBM, Google, and the like, will make computational math trivial. It will only require a human hand in determining what math problems need to be solved by these computers and how that math aligns with the values of society. Math cannot be "value-free."