In the popular Malayalam film Spadikam (Glass Prism, 1995), Chacko Maash (Master Chacko, played by the late thespian Thilakan) says in Malayalam: “Bhoogolatithinte Spandanam Thanne Mathematicsilaanu” (the whole spirit of the earth lies in mathematics).

Swati Sircar, a maths educator at Azim Premji University, also talks about the importance of maths education and why learning maths is inevitable. But unlike Master Chacko, an apostle of indoctrination and knock-and-learn pedagogy, Sircar follows the spirit of the Montessori method of education through self-understanding and fun.

In Spadikam, Chacko’s pedagogical method involved telling his students to swallow algebraic identities. If they didn’t, the cane awaited them. Mrs. Sircar makes materials from cardboard rolls along with toilet paper as instructional aids to teach concepts such as numbers and operations, geometry and spatial understanding, and statistics and probability.

“I follow a low-cost, no-cost approach to teaching,” says Sircar, who has been teaching students for more than a decade through Math Space, an initiative of Mrs. Sircar’s that works with teachers, teacher educators and anyone who helps teachers.

Mrs. Sircar uses used boxes and newspaper pages to upcycle. “Learning is a biological, neurological, emotional and cognitive act. Learning is a thing that happens in every moment or some biological unit. But when it comes to education, it becomes a more social endeavor,” said Ishan Santra, a mathematics education researcher at Michigan State University.

According to Santra, education is a structured way of imparting knowledge through a system using a set curriculum. As he puts it, education is traditionally a requirement for a set of expertise. Nonetheless, the Montessori approach to education in which Sircar grew up sees education based on constant engagement and exploration on one’s own.

– It is important to do everything you learn as practically as possible. And experiential learning is considered an accepted pedagogy,” says K Jayakumar IAS, the former chief secretary of Kerala, who played a prominent role in popularizing the Kerala-inspired District Primary Education Program (DPEP). Although many critics have criticized the proposal, Jayakumar still believes that pedagogy works well when learning a subject like mathematics.

The many ways in which a doll can meet the banana illustrate the three-dimensional space. | Photo by special arrangement

Although Mr. Jayakumar is aware of the effectiveness of Montessori education, he is still deciding how to implement the program, as he is quite skeptical about whether the original method will be popularly followed.

“The teacher I had during this primary was trained under Maria Montessori,” says Sircar. So Sircar got the Montessori spirit in full swing with very little loss in transmission. “Some Montessori materials have already seeped into the mainstream, such as dart cards. I have extended it to decimal numbers,” says Sirkar, who now teaches mathematics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.

Arrow cards let children learn about place value in the number system. The arrow cards with labels are placed in a pile to get a sense of the order of the numbers. If a teacher says 25, the student chooses the card marked 20 and pairs it with 5, making the number 25 because the 20 card is in the tens place and the number 5 is in the ones place.

Sircar says that mathematics is like a language. On one level, language is a means of communication. But it can also be used to weave stories and poems. Likewise, mathematics helps us calculate in daily life, but it also has an element of beauty. Her philosophy is to make learning enjoyable so that children understand it effortlessly.

Math Space by Ms. Sircar was invited to conduct several workshops with government school teachers from several states with a strong emphasis on mathematical representation.

In a typical Math Space workshop for teachers, “We explore concepts and all related aspects with appropriate materials and activities. Each table of 4-6 teachers receives a complete set with all necessary materials and paper materials so that participants can engage with the material immediately .” These materials are recycled from used cardboard and newspapers.

Similarly, Vijay Ravikumar, a mathematics communicator at APU, thinks learning mathematics is a fun activity through new ways like puppetry. He had his undergraduate and PhD studies entirely in the US before moving to Mumbai to work as a mathematician. Mr. Ravikumar’s other interest was puppetry, and this hobby once crossed paths with mathematics to convey the concept of spatial orientation.

“I never connected these, but in this particular scenario it made sense. There’s a certain idea in mathematics when you study geometry and topology, say in your PhD. It has to do with how we can orient ourselves in three-dimensional space , says Ravikumar.

“I had attended a movement workshop by a group from Manipur and they used this a lot in their traditional style of movement,” reckons Ravikumar, adding, “it’s the fact that if you move your hand in a 360° circle, your arm will to get twisted up quite a bit. And if you rotate another 360 degrees, your arm will twist and return to its starting point. This is just a property of space and how we move.”

Mr. Ravikumar, through his workshop, uses a mannequin to perform this movement trick and then explains the complex concept of topology. Along with puppet shows, Ravikumar also talks about concepts like geodesics through worksheet tasks and with bicycle rides along a long sheet kept on the floors.

“For me, math allows me to connect with a lot of different people that I might not otherwise be able to connect with as easily,” says Ravikumar. While Ravikumar is confident of the universality of mathematics, education researchers like Santra believe that making mathematics accessible requires a lot of effort, such as breaking and adjusting the social barriers.

According to him, making mathematics accessible to people from all backgrounds requires that the elite mentality of who gets to learn what mathematics is eroded because mathematics has been used in the past to further marginalize the socially disadvantaged.

Mrs. An advocate for math outreach, Sircar says that making math accessible “is a prerequisite for equity,” pointing to her “low-cost, no-cost” approach. At the same time, scaling up engagement activities should not unduly stress maths teachers who are already saddled with strict schedules and lesson plans, says Ravikumar. “Making mathematics accessible through creative means such as flashcards or puppetry should be done with care and ensure that teachers themselves feel the joy of learning.