Catholic Social Teaching

How we address values and virtues through the Mathematics Curriculum

Our lessons have two common themes.

1. They either use social and economic issues to learn about new topics within the curriculum
2. we use newly taught concepts to engage in discussions around these important social issues.

1.Human Dignity : In Year 9, when dealing with repeated percentage change, we weigh up whether it is more financially prudent for the NHS to keep a patient on life support or not, allowing for dialogue on what constitutes a natural death and the life and dignity of a person. We also use Venn diagrams in Year 9 to show how different blood groups can be categorised and the ethical impact of using artificial organs. During Year 7, when learning about area, we also look at population density and what constitutes dignified living standards. Moreover, in Year 8, when learning about linear graphs, we use data from the USA that show the death penalty is not that big of a deterrent to serious crime and use this as a starting point for discussion on the sanctity of human life.

2.Peace:  As a concept is taught through an understanding of tolerance, both of other people’s views and of people outside our students sphere of influence. As a teaching strategy in Maths, we are tolerant of differing methods and our use of class discussion through tackling mathematical problems, we often find varying strategies to come to the same solution. We teach that no method is better than the other and accept and listen to other points of view.  We also promote maths as a tool to inspire and bring about peace through social equality. In Years 7, 8 and 9, we deliver a series of lessons about St. Johns School, in Korogocho, Kenya. One of the themes from these lessons is understanding how the correct investment can bring about better living conditions and fairness (using scatter graphs to plot expenditure on healthcare against cases of HIV, or using time series analysis to track the proportion of children in education in the UK and Kenya).

3.The common good: A central theme to many of our lessons around the four operations (Year 7), decimals and percentages (Year 8) and calculator skills (Year9) relate around financial literacy. We aim to ensure students leave us able to understand how certain transactions work and how students can contribute to society through taxation. Students learn how to properly budget, manage debt, understand how credit cards work and open a bank account. Furthermore, we strive to ensure students do not fall into the pitfalls that financial insecurity can bring, either to themselves or others. Whilst learning about repeated percentage change in Year 9, we discuss the legitimacy of high-cost interest repayments, loan sharks and payday loans and how some wield money for nefarious means of control and coercion over others.  Several of our Sixth Form students donate their free lesson time to tutoring students in Years 7 and 8. Our Sixth Formers help reinforce learning to those in younger years and also develop a sense of service and altruism.

4.The Option for the Poor and Vulnerable: Mathematics helps us to understand the world and what is happening in it. We could not work out fair wages or develop accurate and impartial measurements of poverty, literacy and mortality without mathematics. At Key Stage 3, we refer to the Millennium Development Goals and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which were established in 2015. In Year 7, students learn to use place value and then apply it to national debt figures for developing countries using resources developed by CAFOD. Furthermore, during Year 7, students are taught to share amounts by ratios and use proportion. During these lessons, we utilise data from the UN on the proportion of students in primary, secondary and tertiary education in different countries and how this impacts the social mobility in these regions.   During Year 8, our students learn to plot graphs on cartesian planes. Here we look at data on the productivity of small-scale farmers in developing nations and how this helps to eliminate hunger through better crop yields.    Through Year 9, our mathematicians develop their fluency with averages and calculate mean wages for several different nations, both developed and developing. This allows discussion on equity and fairness and also on the impact that a minimum wage can have on employers and workers.

5.Dignity of Work:  “I attribute my success to this: I never gave nor took any excuse.” – Florence Nightingale, nurse and statistical pioneer. We aim to ensure students experience dignity of work both through what we teach, and how we teach it. We want students to experience a sense of belonging and a feeling of self-worth. They should have positive attitude to others and well as themselves, where they value and support a diverse society. In Year 9, when teaching about quadratic graphs, one of the real-life examples we use is the Lorenz Curve. This plots income and wealth inequality, allowing students to discuss whether members of society can still feel self-worth even when they are marginalised financially. In Year 8, whilst looking at percentages, we use share price, dividend payments and workers wages to look at whether employers are operating with integrity and honour.

6. Solidarity: In 1977, Mathematician Ubiratan D’Ambrosio introduced the concept of Ethnomathematics. This is the study and celebration of mathematical practices from differing countries and cultures from both historical and modern outlooks. This is something that has become part of many lessons , where the origin of a concept is introduced, how it might have looked previously and the contemporary application. For example, in Year 8, we learn about Pythagoras Theorem, we look at current applications of the theorem by solving problems related to navigation, surveying and architecture.  In Year 7, we also look at various counting structures and arithmetical methods and how some cultures continue to use these even now. In Year 9, students study algebra and geometry in greater depth than before, and learn several methods, which have evolved from different cultures and regions. We like to employ Singapore Bar Modelling when expanding and factorising brackets, as well as solving equations, this allows for a more engaging and hands on approach to algebra.  We also celebrate mathematical role models from other cultures, as shown by several of our wall displays. Simon Singh, Terence Tao, Hannah Fry and Katherine Johnson are just a handful of the diverse and inclusive mathematicians that we show our students to inspire them to become great people and mathematicians.

7. Care for God’s Creation: “Mathematics in the language with which God has written the universe” – Galileo Galilei.  During Years 7 and 9, we delve into Statistics and how we collect and represent data. Students gather data on rising sea levels, consumption of single use plastic and coral reef coverage. Through this, we allow students to discover how different resources are becoming scarcer and what humans are doing to counter this (and then seeing if this has had an impact through interpreting graphs). In Year 8, when learning about sequences, we take a more in depth look at Fibonacci sequences and how the Golden Ratio, or Divine Proportion, is apparent in not only humans, but nature, art, music and architecture. This branch of Maths has been used as an example of the wonder of God’s creation and how it can be discovered in so many different places. Johannes Kepler wrote in 1619 that mathematics was created, like man, in Gods image and that the discovery of new mathematical concepts was also a way of understanding His creation even more. We hope that students see mathematics as essential within God’s creation.