A Brief Reflection About the Similarty of my Two Teachable Subjects Mathematics and Religion

At first glance, Mathematics and Religion do not have very much in common.
It is certainly an odd teachable subject combination, but after some reflection, I do
see a connection between the two subjects. During my final practicum where I
taught mathematics, I was made aware of this connection. My associate teacher
had a philosophy similar to my own, in which he believed it was of utmost
importance to aid students to a conceptual understanding of mathematical topics,
rather than reducing the subject to a bunch of rules, procedures and memorization.
By highschool, many students have grown accustomed to these low level methods.
They want to be spoon-fed a process or an equation without taking the time to
think about the logic and reasoning behind it. Students need to be given more
opportunities to discover and think for themselves. With the aid of the teacher
prompts, students may be able to come up with the procedures on their own, along
with an understanding and appreciation with where they came from. There are
several lousy ways of teaching math that can suck the joy right out of what
mathematics is about. Unfortunately, this is what many students have come to
expect. Just tell me how to do it or Show what the steps are are often the groans
heard when a teacher tries a more inquiry based approach to teaching
mathematics. Unfortunately, procedural knowledge and memorization are the
lowest level on Blooms Taxonomy, and most students cant make the jump from
this to the higher levels, such as application, evaluation, or synthesis. Also, students
are much more likely to retain the knowledge if they constructed it on their own.
In Jesus day, there was another group that loved to reduce religion to rules
and procedures. They were called Pharisees. Jesus was not to fond of them. They
were great when it came to obeying a list of rules and procedures, but they lacked a
basic conceptual understanding of what it meant to love God and love others. Many
Pharisees were not good with understanding or applying this fundamental concept,
despite their memorization and procedural knowledge. Some Pharisees might have
been on the right track, just like there always seem to be a few keen students in
each classroom, but the majority of Pharisees reduced their religion to list of dos
and donts without a true understanding for the reason behind them.
In both religion and math, it is important to understand what you believe,
rather than blindly following rules and procedures without understanding the
reasoning behind them. We are all in danger of being gulity of this if we are not
careful. This is not to say that we must understand everything in mathematics and
religion. That would be impossible! At the very least, I want students to have an
appreciation for the complexity of mathematics, and the mystery of the Christian
faith.