1

Do Teachers Need to Incorporate the History of Mathematics in Their

Teaching? by Po-Hung Liu
Retrieved and adapted from: http://gec.ncut.edu.tw/teacher/math/homepage/liu_pohong/teach_class1_download.php?sn=4

The merits of incorporating history into mathematics education have received considerable
attention and have been discussed for decades. Still, before taking as dogma that history must be
incorporated in mathematics, an obvious question is, why should the history of mathematics have
a place in school mathematics? Answering this question is difficult, since the answer is subject to
ones personal definition of teaching and is also bound up with ones view of mathematics.
Fauvels (1991) list of fifteen reasons for including the history of mathematics in the mathematics
curriculum includes cognitive, affective, and sociocultural aspects. My purpose in this article is
not to provide complete and satisfactory answers but rather, on the basis of theoretical arguments
and empirical evidence, to attempt to pinpoint worthwhile considerations to help high school
teachers think about what history really can do for the curriculum and for their teaching. On the
basis of Fauvels list and other scholars arguments, I propose five reasons for using the history of
mathematics in school curricula:
1. History can help increase motivation and helps develop a positive attitude toward
learning.
2. Past obstacles in the development of mathematics can help explain what todays
students find difficult.
3. Historical problems can help develop students mathematical thinking.
4. History reveals the humanistic facets of mathematical knowledge.
5. History gives teachers a guide for teaching.

1. History can help increase motivation and helps develop a positive attitude toward
learning
As sometimes taught, mathematics has a reputation as a dull drill subject, and relevant
studies report a steady decline in students attitudes toward the subject through high school. The
idea of eliciting students interest and developing positive attitudes toward learning mathematics
by using history has drawn considerable attention. Many mathematics education researchers and

2
mathematics teachers believe that mathematics can be made more interesting by revealing
mathematicians personalities and that historical problems may awaken and maintain interest in
the subject. By comparing two college algebra classes, McBride and Rollins (1977) probed the
effects of including the history of mathematics and found a significant improvement in the
students attitudes toward mathematics when history was included. Philippou and Christou (1998)
also reported that prospective teachers attitudes and views of mathematics showed radical change
after they took two history-based mathematics courses in a preparatory program. One teacher
responded,
History of mathematics provided me with a variety of interesting new experiences. Through the
journey I realize that mathematics has always been and continues to be a very useful subject. The
course showed me that mathematics is, at least sometimes, a human activity. I felt more confident
when I realized that even great mathematicians did mistakes as I frequently do. (Philippou and
Christou 1998, p. 202)
2. Past obstacles in the development of mathematics can help explain what todays
students find difficult
During the development of mathematical ideas, certain concepts were slowly recognized by
mathematicians. It is reasonable to assume that todays students would also encounter difficulties
when they begin to learn these concepts. For instance, the concept of function is taught to students
as early as middle school, yet many students in high school (and even college students) hold
incomplete and inappropriate ideas about this concept (Carlson 1998; Williams 1991). Generally
speaking, the beginnings of an implicit use of functions can be traced back to the ancient
Babylonians. The earliest explicit recognition of the concept of function did not appear until the
time of Nicole Oresme in the fourteenth century. James Gregory gave the first explicit, although
incomplete, definition of function in 1667. Johann Bernoulli and Leonhard Euler systematically
investigated the theory of function, yet both failed to distinguish between function and value of
function. Their statements did not indicate that they recognized the uniqueness of function value.
The concepts of domain and range, terms commonplace in modern textbooks, did not come into
play until the late nineteenth century. We must be aware that the present definition of function is
a result of long term historical evolution. Students negative outlook toward the formal definition
of function is therefore not difficult to understand.

3
A moderate or convenient mathematical notation can assist our thinking in understanding
mathematical concepts (Plya 1945), whereas one of the major obstacles in learning algebra is the
difficulty in using and understanding the meaning of mathematical symbols.
History may also explain students troubles in this respect (Avital 1995). As A History of
Mathematical Notations (Cajori 1928) demonstrates, the evolution of mathematical notation was
sluggish and played a significant role in developing mathematical ideas.
Ancient Greek mathematics did not go beyond geometry, partially because the Greeks did not
recognize the enormous contribution that using the alphabet could make to increase the
effectiveness and generality of algebraic methodology (Kline 1972). The decline of ancient
Chinese mathematics was also partly caused by the absence of a simple and effective symbolic
system. Knowing the historical struggle to pick suitable notations can increase teachers
comprehension of students barriers to symbolic understanding.
3. Historical problems can help develop students mathematical thinking
The idea of using historical mathematics problems in teaching has recently received
considerable attention among scholars. In contrast to telling stories to attract students interest and
improve their attitudes, using historical problems in class has the advantage of improving students
attitudes about mathematics, as well as improving their understanding of mathematics. Many
mathematical concepts have evolved and have been revised through the ages. The wisdom behind
these great endeavors may provide insight into the essence of mathematical thinking. As Ernest
says, Mathematicians in history struggled to create mathematical processes and strategies which
are still valuable in learning and doing mathematics (1998, p. 25). Mathematical thinking is a
combination of complicated processes: guessing, induction, deduction, specification,
generalization, analogy, formal and informal reasoning, verification, and so on. Yet modern
textbooks usually present mathematical concepts in a neat and polished format that hides the
struggle, hides the adventure. The whole story vanishes (Lakatos, 1976, p. 142). By posing
historical problems and analyzing the approaches by mathematicians of previous eras, students can
better understand mathematical thinking and appreciate its dynamic nature.
4. History reveals the humanistic facets of mathematical knowledge

4
Considerable research suggests that many students believe that mathematics is fixed, rather
than flexible, relative, and humanistic. Mathematicians polished style in published mathematics
usually eliminates the human side of grappling, of perseverance, of the ups and downs experienced
on the road to final achievement (Avital 1995); and mathematics teachers pass on neatly deductive
formats to students without modification. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
proposes that helping students learn the value of mathematics is an a priori goal of school
mathematics (NCTM 1989) and that all students should develop an appreciation of mathematics
as being one of the greatest cultural and intellectual achievements of humankind (NCTM 2000).
Yet not much has been done to achieve these objectives. By virtue of its logical and deductive
traits, mathematics is typically deemed the most reliable and certain body of knowledge among all
school subjects. Nevertheless, history reveals that this widely accepted impression is questionable.
The history of mathematics consistently highlights the fact that the initial driving forces of
mathematical knowledge are plausible conjectures and heuristic thinking; logical arguments and
deductive reasoning later come into play. Acceptance or rejection of a concept is mainly tied to
mathematicians beliefs about what mathematics should be. These beliefs can be illogical, even
metaphysical. Examples like the Pythagoreans rejection of irrational numbers, Kroneckers
objection to an infinite number of real numbers, and Cauchys denial of complex numbers indicate
illogical and irrational aspects of mathematical progress. The importance of introducing
humanistic aspects of such knowledge in education can be best summarized by Tymoczkos
argument:
It took human beings thousands of years to progress to the mathematical level of todays high
school students, and perhaps teachers should mention this to students. Educators ignore humanistic
mathematics at their peril. Without it, educators may teach students to compute and to solve, just
as they can teach students to read and write. But without it, educators cant teach students to love
or even like, to appreciate or even understand, mathematics. (Tymoczko, 1993, pp. 1214)
5. History gives teachers a guide for teaching
The teacher always needs to determine the best approach of assisting students in grappling
with and understanding ideas. History is one valid approach (Katz 1997). In responding to the
question of whether history is important in mathematics teaching, Morris Kline indicates,

5
I definitely believe that the historical sequence is an excellent guide to pedagogy. Every teacher
of secondary and college mathematics should know the history of mathematics. There are many
reasons, but perhaps the most important is that it is a guide to pedagogy. [italics added] (Albers
and Alexanderson 1985, p. 171)
Klines argument explicitly and clearly delineates the chief rationale for using history in
mathematics teaching.
Integrating history into school mathematics curricula not only helps improve students
attitudes and enhance higher-level thinking, but it also helps expand teachers understanding of
the nature of mathematical knowledge. Along with the growth in their understanding of real
mathematics, that is, the dialectical nature of mathematics in addition to its deductive nature,
teachers are expected to restructure their beliefs about mathematics. This restructuring may in turn
affect their thinking about curriculum design and instructional behavior. Planning curriculum
involves far more than choosing the content to be taught. Teachers must decide the instructional
sequence and the methods to use in teaching the content. In this respect, Plya was convinced that
the genetic principle offers an important guide. By genetic principle, Plya means retracing
the great steps of the mental evolution of the human race. Plya (1965) indicates that understanding
how the human race has acquired knowledge of certain facts or concepts puts us in a better position
to judge how a human child should acquire such knowledge. The German mathematician Otto
Toeplitz (1963) also proposed that a genetic approach is best suited to bridge the gap between high
school and college mathematics:
Follow the genetic course, which is the way man has gone in his understanding of mathematics,
and you will see that humanity did ascend gradually from the simple to the complex. Didactic
methods can thus benefit immeasurably from the study of history. (Toeplitz 1963, p. vi)

6
Teaching

with

original

historical

sources

in

mathematics

by

Laubenbacher & Pengelley

Retrieved and adapted from https://www.math.nmsu.edu/~history/

Our odyssey of teaching with original sources

Our journey towards utilizing original texts as the primary object of study in undergraduate
and graduate courses began at the senior undergraduate level. In 1987 we read William Dunham's
article A "Great Theorems" Course in Mathematics (American Mathematical Monthly 93 (1986),
in which he describes a course based on mathematical masterpieces from the past, viewed as works
of art. His ideas and materials went on to become the well-known bestseller Journey Through
Genius: Great Theorems of Mathematics. We were inspired to develop a similar course, at the
senior level, but with one crucial difference: Whereas Dunham presents his students with his own
modern rendition of these masterpieces, our idea was to use the original texts themselves. With
assistance from New Mexico State University's honors program, dean, and mathematics
department, we developed and team taught the course Great Theorems: The Art of Mathematics,
and it has now found a successful and permanent niche in the university's curriculum, serving as a
lively capstone course for students majoring in a number of diverse disciplines. It is the only
mathematics course certified to meet the university's "Viewing a Wider World" upper division
general education requirement.
Our experiences with this senior level course convinced us that teaching with original
sources could be both successful and inspiring for us and our students. The course is described in
detail in Mathematical Masterpieces: Teaching with Original Sources (in Vita Mathematica:
Historical Research and Integration with Teaching, R. Calinger.
We also involved other faculty in teaching and contributing material for this course. Our
four author second book Mathematical Masterpieces: Chronicles by the Explorers has emerged
from this course, written with two of these colleagues at New Mexico State University, Arthur
Knoebel and Jerry Lodder. We came to believe that this approach to teaching and learning could
also help provide the motivation, perspective, and overview so lacking in typical lower division
courses, since it is being increasingly recognized that an historical point of view can address these
deficiencies. As Niels Henrik Abel observed: "It appears to me that if one wants to make progress

7
in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils." We have written an article
Recovering Motivation in Mathematics: Teaching with Original Sources espousing our reasons
and philosophy for this teaching approach. We were inspired to try to use the study of original
texts as a teaching pedagogy introducing lower division students to important currents of
mathematical thought. Thus we developed the course Spirit and Evolution of Mathematics, again
with support from the New Mexico State University mathematics department and honors program,
allowing us to team teach the course while under development. It provides an "introduction to
great problems of mathematics" for students with a good high school background in mathematics,
and is intended both to attract and retain mathematics majors, and to give non majors a rich
experience in the nature and content of mathematical thought, satisfying a lower division
university mathematics general education requirement (the course is one of only a handful certified
for this). In fact, the true prerequisite is a certain level of mathematical maturity and ability, rather
than courses with specific content. Thus, a much broader audience has access to an interesting
course with serious mathematical content.
Our experiences, after teaching this course numerous times, have shown that with careful
selection of original texts, supplemental prose readings, and appropriate format for classroom
activities and assignments, this approach can be a tremendous success. Students find the study of
original sources fascinating, especially when combined with prose readings supplying cultural and
historical context, giving the course something of an interdisciplinary flavor. The benefits for
instructors and students alike are a deepened appreciation for the origins and nature of modern
mathematics, as well as the lively and stimulating class discussions engendered by the
interpretation of original sources. The course is described in detail in our article Great Problems
of Mathematics: A Course Based on Original Sources. Our first book Mathematical Expeditions:
Chronicles by the Explorers grew out of this course. Since then we have expanded the use of
original sources into high school courses as well as graduate courses. Work with high school
students during two summer workshops at Colorado College with Mike Siddoway is described in
Great Problems of Mathematics: A Workshop for High School Students. We also conducted a
graduate course at New Mexico State University for high school teachers on using original sources
in the high school curriculum. Our graduate students showed great interest in this, and it has
evolved into a regular graduate course The Role of History in Teaching Mathematics, providing

8
part of a growing mathematics education component in the mathematics graduate program at New
Mexico State University.
The paper A graduate course on the role of history in teaching mathematics describes the
course and its origins. The course syllabus considers the use of history, in particular original
sources, throughout the mathematics curriculum. Our graduate students in this course develop and
critique major teaching units based on history, often on original sources, and we now have quite a
collection of the historical teaching modules they have written. A number of these have been tested
in the classroom. Their level ranges from middle school through the advanced undergraduate
curriculum. Write to us if you want copies of any of these. Our long term dream is that the entire
mathematics curriculum should be historically based, with original sources playing a role
throughout, and we ourselves are endeavoring to incorporate both history and Teaching with
Original Historical Sources in Mathematics original sources into all the courses we teach. More
recently David has teamed up with other colleagues from mathematics and computer science in
applying our approach to the teaching of discrete mathematics, broadly conceived.
We are combining the pedagogy of student projects (introduced into our calculus classes
years ago) with the pedagogy of using original historical sources, in a NSF funded program to
develop and test student projects written using primary sources for teaching discrete mathematics.

9
The Singular Mind of Terry Tao; A prodigy grows up to become one of
the greatest mathematicians in the world. By GARETH COOK
Retrieved and adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html?_r=0

This April, as undergraduates

strolled along the street outside his modest
office on the campus of the University of
California,

Los

Angeles,

the

mathematician Terence Tao mused about

the

possibility

that

water

could

spontaneously explode. A widely used set

of equations describes the behavior of fluids like water, but there seems to be nothing in those
equations, he told me, that prevents a wayward eddy from suddenly turning in on itself, tightening
into an angry gyre, until the density of the energy at its core becomes infinite: a catastrophic
singularity. Someone tossing a penny into the fountain by the faculty center or skipping a stone
at the Santa Monica beach could apparently set off a chain reaction that would take out Southern
California.
This doesnt tend to happen. And yet, Tao explained, nobody can say precisely why. Its a
decades-old conundrum, and Tao has recently been working on an approach to a solution one
part fanciful, one part outright absurd, like some lost passage from Alices Adventures in
Wonderland.
Imagine, he said, that someone awfully clever could construct a machine out of pure water.
It would be built not of rods and gears but from a pattern of interacting currents. As he talked, Tao
carved shapes in the air with his hands, like a magician. Now imagine, he went on, that this
machine were able to make a smaller, faster copy of itself, which could then make another, and so
on, until one has infinite speed in a tiny space and blows up. Tao was not proposing constructing
such a machine I dont know how! he said, laughing. It was merely a thought experiment,
of the sort that Einstein used to develop the theory of special relativity. But, Tao explained, if he
can show mathematically that there is nothing, in principle, preventing such a fiendish contraption
from operating, then it would mean that water can, in fact, explode. And in the process, he will

10
have also solved the Navier-Stokes global regularity problem, which has become, since it emerged
more than a century ago, one of the most important in all of mathematics.
Tao, who is 40, sat at a desk by the window, papers lying in drifts at the margins. Thin and
unassuming, he was dressed in Birkenstocks, a rumpled blue-gray polo shirt and jeans with the
cuffs turned up. Behind him, a small almond couch faced a glyph-covered blackboard running the
length of the room. The couch had been pulled away from the wall to accommodate the beat-up
Trek bike he rides to work. At the rooms other end stood a fiberboard bookcase haphazardly piled
with books, including Compactness and Contradiction and Poincars Legacies, Part I, two
of the 16 volumes Tao has written since he was a teenager.
Fame came early for Tao, who was born in South Australia. An old headline in his
hometown paper, The Advertiser, reads: TINY TERENCE, 7, IS HIGH-SCHOOL WHIZ. The
clipping includes a photo of a diminutive Tao in 11th-grade math class, wearing a V-neck sweater
over a white turtleneck, kneeling on his chair so he can reach a desk he is sharing with a girl more
than twice his age. His teacher told the reporter that he hardly taught Tao anything, because Tao
was always working two lessons ahead of the others. (Tao taught himself to read at age 2.)
A few months later, halfway through the school year, Tao was moved up to 12th-grade
math. Three years later, at age 10, Tao became the youngest person in history to win a medal in
the International Mathematical Olympiad. He has since won many other prizes, including a
MacArthur genius grant and the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel Prize for mathematicians.
Today, many regard Tao as the finest mathematician of his generation.
That spring day in his office, reflecting on his career so far, Tao told me that his view of
mathematics has utterly changed since childhood. When I was growing up, I knew I wanted to
be a mathematician, but I had no idea what that entailed, he said in a lilting Australian accent. I
sort of imagined a committee would hand me problems to solve or something. But it turned out
that the work of real mathematicians bears little resemblance to the manipulations and
memorization of the math student. Even those who experience great success through their college
years may turn out not to have what it takes. The ancient art of mathematics, Tao has discovered,
does not reward speed so much as patience, cunning and, perhaps most surprising of all, the sort
of gift for collaboration and improvisation that characterizes the best jazz musicians. Tao now
believes that his younger self, the prodigy who wowed the math world, wasnt truly doing math at

11
all. Its as if your only experience with music were practicing scales or learning music theory,
he said, looking into light pouring from his window. I didnt learn the deeper meaning of the
subject until much later.
Possibly the greatest mathematician since antiquity was Carl Friedrich Gauss, a dour
German born in the late 18th century. He did not get along with his own children and kept
important results to himself, seeing them as unsuitable for public view. They were discovered
among his papers after his death. Before and since, the annals of the field have teemed with
variations on this misfit theme, from Isaac Newton, the loner with a savage temper; to John Nash,
the beautiful mind whose work shaped economics and even political science, but who was
racked by paranoid delusions; to, more recently, Grigory Perelman, the Russian who conquered
the Poincar conjecture alone, then refused the Fields Medal, and who also allowed his fingernails
to grow until they curled.
Tao, by contrast, is, as one colleague put it, super-normal. He has a gentle, self-deprecating manner. He eschews job offers from prestigious East Coast institutions in favor of a
relaxed, no-drama department in a place where he can enjoy the weather. In class, he conveys a
sense that mathematics is fun. One of his students told me that he had recently joked with another
about the many ways Tao defies all the Hollywood mad-genius tropes. They will never make a
movie about him, he said. He doesnt have a troubled life. He has a family, and they seem
happy, and hes usually smiling.
This can be traced to his own childhood, which he experienced as super-normal, even if, to
outside eyes, it was anything but. Taos family spent most of his early years living in the foothills
south of Adelaide, in a brick split-level with views of Gulf St. Vincent. The home was designed
by his father, Billy, a pediatrician who immigrated with Taos mother, Grace, from Hong Kong in
1972, three years before Tao, the eldest of three, was born in 1975. The three boys Nigel, Trevor
and Terry, as everyone calls him often played together, and a favorite pastime was inventing
board games. They typically appropriated a Scrabble board for a basic grid, then brought in
Scrabble tiles, chess pieces, Chinese checkers, mah-jongg tiles and Dungeons & Dragons dice,
according to Nigel, who now works for Google. For story lines, they frequently drew from video
games coming out at the time, like Super Mario Bros., then added layers of complex, whimsical
rules. (Trevor, a junior chess champion, was too good to beat, so the boys created a variation on

12
that game as well: Each turn began with a die roll to determine which piece could be moved.) Tao
was a voracious consumer of fantasy books like Terry Pratchetts Discworld series. When a class
was boring, he doodled intricate maps of imaginary lands.
Terry Tao, age 7, in an 11th-grade math class. CreditPhotograph by The
Advertiser, from the Tao family
By the spring of 1985, with a 9-year-old Tao splitting time
between high school and nearby Flinders University, Billy and Grace
took him on a three-week American tour to seek advice from top
mathematicians and education experts. On the Baltimore campus of
Johns Hopkins, they met with Julian Stanley, a Georgia-born psychologist who founded the Center
for Talented Youth there. Tao was one of the most talented math students Stanley ever tested
at 8 years old, Tao scored a 760 on the math portion of the SAT but Stanley urged the couple
to keep taking things slow and give their sons emotional and social skills time to develop.
Even at a relatively deliberate pace, by age 17, Tao had finished a masters thesis
(Convolution Operators Generated by Right-Monogenic and Harmonic Kernels) and moved to
Princeton University to start on his Ph.D. Taos application to the university included a letter from
Paul Erdos, the revered Hungarian mathematician. I am sure he will develop into a first-rate
mathematician and perhaps into a really great one, read Erdoss brief, typewritten note. I
recommend him in the highest possible terms. Yet on arrival, it was Tao, the teenage prodigy,
who was intimidated. During Taos first year, Andrew Wiles, then a Princeton professor,
announced that he proved Fermats Last Theorem, a legendary problem that had gone unsolved
for more than three centuries. Taos fellow graduate students spoke eloquently about mathematical
fields of which he had barely heard.
Tao became notorious for his nights haunting the graduate computer room to play the
historical-simulation game Civilization. (He now avoids computer games, he told me, because of
what he calls a completist streak that makes it hard to stop playing.) At a local comic-book
store, Tao met a circle of friends who played Magic: The Gathering, the intricate fantasy card
game. This was Taos first real experience hanging out with people his age, but there was also an
element, he admitted, of escaping the pressures of Princeton. Gifted children often avoid
challenges at which they might not excel. Before Tao went to Princeton, his grades had flagged at

13
Flinders. In a course on quantum physics, the instructor told the class that the final would include
an essay on the history of the field. Tao, then 12, blew off studying, and when he sat down for the
exam, he was stunned to discover that the essay would count for half the grade. I remember
crying, Tao said, and the proctor had to escort me out. He failed.
At Princeton, crisis came in the form of the generals, a wide-ranging, arduous oral
examination administered by three professors. While other students spent months working through
problem sets and giving one another mock exams, Tao settled on his usual test-prep strategy: last-minute cramming. I went in and very quickly got out of my depth, he said. They were asking
questions which I had no ability to answer. Immediately after, Tao sat with his adviser, Elias
Stein, and felt that he had let him down. Tao wasnt really trying, and the hardest part was yet to
come.
The true work of the mathematician is not experienced until the later parts of graduate
school, when the student is challenged to create knowledge in the form of a novel proof. It is
common to fill page after page with an attempt, the seasons turning, only to arrive precisely where
you began, empty-handed or to realize that a subtle flaw of logic doomed the whole enterprise
from its outset. The steady state of mathematical research is to be completely stuck. It is a process
that Charles Fefferman of Princeton, himself a onetime math prodigy turned Fields medalist, likens
to playing chess with the devil. The rules of the devils game are special, though: The devil is
vastly superior at chess, but, Fefferman explained, you may take back as many moves as you like,
and the devil may not. You play a first game, and, of course, he crushes you. So you take back
moves and try something different, and he crushes you again, in much the same way. If you are
sufficiently wily, you will eventually discover a move that forces the devil to shift strategy; you
still lose, but aha! you have your first clue.
As a group, the people drawn to mathematics tend to value certainty and logic and a
neatness of outcome, so this game becomes a special kind of torture. And yet this is what any
would-be mathematician must summon the courage to face down: weeks, months, years on a
problem that may or may not even be possible to unlock. You find yourself sitting in a room
without doors or windows, and you can shout and carry on all you want, but no one is listening.

14
Artur Avila, Brazil's shining math star by Shannon Sims, 2015
Retrieved and adapted from http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/artur-avila-brazils-shining-math-star/61190

Youd be forgiven for not having heard of

Artur Avila, the prodigious Brazilian who won the
worlds highest prize in math the Fields Medal
last year. Outside of Brazil, the press focused on
one of his co-winners, Maryam Mirzakhani, the
first woman to win. And though the mathematician
should have dominated local coverage, seeing as how he was the first Brazilian and Latin American
to win the prize, the papers ran a different story: that of a presidential candidate whose plane
crashed the same morning as the prizes announcement. Avila, by all accounts the brightest math
brain Brazil has ever grown, was overlooked.
The Fields is as close as one can come to winning the Nobel Prize, where there is no math
category, and youve got to get there quickly to win (its awarded once every four years, and the
cutoff age is 40). Avila, the 36-year-old star in the global math scene, shines all the brighter
because of the darkness he rose out of. His home country, where math and science education hasnt
been prioritized, perpetually ranks terribly on just about any of these measures. According to the
OECD, Brazil ranks 60th when it comes to math and science education, well below the average
and somewhere between Georgia and Jordan. Almost improbably given its size and population of
more than 200 million people, Brazil has never taken home a Nobel, much less a Fields. Avila, it
turns out, is the outlier.
IMPA is considered the best math institute in Latin America and actively recruits. Avila
would soon become its biggest recruit yet.
Avila knew expectations were high. It turned out to be really quite a lot of pressure
optimism, but pressure, he says. In a lot of ways, winning the Fields put a target on his back.
Usually when someone wins the Fields, it opens them up to criticism people pick their work
apart, notes Edward Frenkel, a mathematics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

15
But Frenkel says he has heard only good things about Avilas work: It seems to have stood up to
the criticism.
Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Avila, like many middle- and upper-class Brazilians,
attended private school. His parents, who worked in the insurance industry, quickly recognized
their sons knack for math and began buying him advanced books to feed his appetite; by 11, hed
gotten his hands on his first calculus book. While the environment was no pressure, Avila says,
pressure came soon enough, when at 13, he entered the Brazilian Math Olympiad, a tournament
for young students, and found the types of problems presented difficult, because they werent
formulaic. He returned home and redoubled his efforts; by 16, he had won a gold medal at the
International Mathematical Olympiad in Toronto. That win put him on the radar of the National
Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, or IMPA, the math paradise he would return to again
and again.
IMPA sits in a forested spot down the coast from Rio de Janeiro. Its considered the best
math institute in Latin America and actively recruits bright stars. Avila would soon become its
biggest recruit yet. By his senior year of high school, Avila was already studying at a masters
level at IMPA; they let him quickly earn his bachelors diploma, to not waste time, he says.
During this period his focus was so much on the learning that, he says shyly, my social side
developed afterward at that time it was kind of on the back burner. Avila thrived at IMPA,
guided by math wizards like Mikhail Lyubich and Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, and by age 21, hed
earned his Ph.D.
Since that time, Avila has split his years between IMPA and the University of Paris, focused
on the research side of the field of dynamical systems, or simply, the changing nature of objects
over time. Along the way, he has solved a famous problem known as the Ten Martini Problem
(another mathematician offered to buy 10 martinis for anyone who could solve it), which
elaborated on a theorem first presented by Erwin Schrdinger, a Nobel Prize winner in physics.
The Fields award committee stated that Avilas signature combination of tremendous analytical
power and deep intuition about dynamical systems has unblocked a whole direction of research.
But back home, the math scene isnt so promising, and Avila recognizes that he has a
responsibility to spread awareness of his field. He thinks the future of math in Brazil is dependent
on improving the basic understanding of professors. How, he asks, can they teach innovative,

16
in-depth thinking if they dont fully understand the concepts themselves? The key, he says, is
investing in advanced math training for students who can then become a new generation of teachers
a complicated problem, he acknowledges, squinting his eyes and furrowing his brow.
Meanwhile, some Brazilians are finally taking notice. During one of Avilas lectures at a
literary festival in the town of Paraty, people filled up the largest venue, then crowded under an
outside tent in pouring rain, no less to hear the golden son speak. Though reticent and even
a bit defensive at times during our lunch of fish stew the day before, Avila came alive under the
warm stage spotlights, drawing laughter from the crowd and posing for photographs afterward in
a tight black T-shirt and freshly confident smile.

17
The Impact of Culture on Education by M.S. Rosenberg | D.L. Westling |
J. McLeskey Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall. Updated on Jul 20,
2010
Retrieved and adapted from http://www.education.com/reference/article/impact-culture-education/

Cultural tendencies impact the way children participate in education. The table
below describes different expectations about "normal" school behavior for students from
individualist and collectivist cultures As you review this information, take a moment to think about
how teachers who lack knowledge about culture might interpret the behavior of a child from a
collectivist culture These differences may cause educators to inaccurately judge students from
some cultures as poorly behaved or disrespectful In addition, because cultural differences are hard
to perceive, students may find themselves reprimanded by teachers but fail to understand what
they did that caused concern.

Source: Adapted from Individualist and Collectivist Perspectives on Education, from the Diversity Kit (2002) Providence, R.I.: The Education
Alliance.

The influence of culture on beliefs about education, the value of education, and
participation styles cannot be overestimated Many Asian students, for example, tend to be quiet in
class, and making eye contact with teachers is considered inappropriate for many of these children
(Bennett, 2003) In contrast, most European American children are taught to value active classroom

18
discussion and to look teachers directly in the eye to show respect, while their teachers view
students' participation as a sign of engagement and competence.
Another contrast involves the role of Hispanic parents in education Parents from some
Hispanic cultures tend to regard teachers as experts and will often defer educational decision
making to them (Valds, 1996) In contrast, European American parents are often more actively
involved in their children's classrooms, are visible in the classrooms, or volunteer and assist
teachers.
These cultural differences in value and belief may cause educators to make inaccurate
judgments regarding the value that nonEuropean American families place on education While it
is important to keep in mind that different cultural groups tend to follow particular language and
interaction styles, there is tremendous variability within cultural groups (Gutirrez & Rogoff,
2003) Thus, educators need to understand individual histories and ideologies regarding education
and learning as well as the cultural patterns and beliefs of groups Let's look at a couple of cases to
examine in more detail how culture impacts educational interactions.
Excerpt from Special Education for Today's Teachers: An Introduction, by M.S. Rosenberg, D.L. Westling, J. McLeskey, 2008 edition, p. 63-64.

19
The 21st century pedagogy teachers should be aware of
Retrieved from http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2011/01/21st-centurypedagogy-teachers-should.html

Interpersonal learning, personalized learning, second life learning, 3d learning,

collaborative learning and virtual learning, these are just some of the few buzz words you would
be reading so often in todays educational literature. Things have changed; old methods and
pedagogies are no longer relevant. The teacher controlled learning where pre-constructed
information is presented in formal and standardized classroom settings becomes very obsolete.
The urgent questions we should, as educators, ask ourselves are: what are the driving factors
behind this huge transformation in learning? And do we need a new pedagogy to better enhance
learning? Advancements in technology and particularly social networking technologies are
changing the whole educational framework. Users now can have access to information whenever
and wherever they want. Blogs, wikis, socializing sites, podcasts, networks are more and more
democratizing knowledge and radically changing the overall notion of schooling.
It is evident now that we are in front of two different versions of learner one is labeled the
20th century learning and the second is called the 21st century learning. These two learning
paradigms are totally different in terms of skills, objectives, and methodologies of instruction
employed in each one of them. Thus, the need for a new educational model, a serious rethinking
of the nature of schooling, its goals, pedagogies, curriculum, structures, and assumptions is
pressingly urgent, and as I have already mentioned in the popular " 21st century Teaching and
Learning Skills Ebook " students today are digitally focused and require new skills that would
meet up the needs of this new era.
But the thing is teaching new skills is not the only solution and there is more to it than just
that, in fact we need a new pedagogy with specific features that would cover every learning aspect.
What are some of the 21st century pedagogy features and skills?
The skills that are pivotal to achieve the 21st century pedagogy goals are:

Critical thinking

Active learning

Problem solving skills

20

Communicating, making connections, creating and expressing oneself in a variety of ways

Contextualized knowledge.

Collaborative teamwork. This is mainly achieved through web2.0 technologies and social
networking tools.
If you have read the UNESCOS publication The four pillars of education you would

realize that collaboration is the core element of the four pillars which are:

Learning to know

Learning to do

Learning to live together

Learning to be

21st century pedagogy develops some particular kinds of fluencies in students:

Technology fluency: know how to use technological tools

Information fluency: know how to gather, process and validate information

Media fluency: know how to view, select, and use media.

21
Skimming and scanning
Retrieved and adapted from http://www.42explore.com/skim.htm

Easier - There are different styles of reading for different situations. The technique you
choose will depend on the purpose for reading. For example, you might be reading for enjoyment,
information, or to complete a task. If you are exploring or reviewing, you might skim a document.
If you're searching for information, you might scan for a particular word. To get detailed
information, you might use a technique such as SQ4R. You need to adjust your reading speed and
technique depending on your purpose.
Many people consider skimming and scanning search techniques rather than reading
strategies. However, when reading large volumes of information, they may be more practical than
reading. For example, you might be searching for specific information, looking for clues, or
reviewing information.
Harder - Web pages, novels, textbooks, manuals, magazines, newspapers, and mail are just
a few of the things that people read every day. Effective and efficient readers learn to use many
styles of reading for different purposes. Skimming, scanning, and critical reading are different
styles of reading and information processing.
Skimming is used to quickly identify the main ideas of a text. When you read the
newspaper, you're probably not reading it word-by-word, instead you're scanning the text.
Skimming is done at a speed three to four times faster than normal reading. People often skim
when they have lots of material to read in a limited amount of time. Use skimming when you want
to see if an article may be of interest in your research.
There are many strategies that can be used when skimming. Some people read the first and
last paragraphs using headings, summarizes and other organizers as they move down the page or
screen. You might read the title, subtitles, subheading, and illustrations. Consider reading the first
sentence of each paragraph. This technique is useful when you're seeking specific information
rather than reading for comprehension. Skimming works well to find dates, names, and places. It
might be used to review graphs, tables, and charts.
Scanning is a technique you often use when looking up a word in the telephone book or
dictionary. You search for key words or ideas. In most cases, you know what you're looking for,
so you're concentrating on finding a particular answer. Scanning involves moving your eyes
quickly down the page seeking specific words and phrases. Scanning is also used when you first
find a resource to determine whether it will answer your questions. Once you've scanned the
document, you might go back and skim it.
When scanning, look for the author's use of organizers such as numbers, letters, steps, or
the words, first, second, or next. Look for words that are bold faced, italics, or in a different font
size, style, or color. Sometimes the author will put key ideas in the margin.

22
Reading off a computer screen has become a growing concern. Research shows that people
have more difficulty reading off a computer screen than off paper. Although they can read and
comprehend at the same rate as paper, skimming on the computer is much slower than on paper.
Exercises
-

Reading skills for academic study: Scanning for specific information.

o Exercise 1
Read the following text quickly and fill in the table. What do the numbers
given in the table refer to?
1%
2%
6%
13%
16%
30%
3/4
86%

Spoon-fed feel lost at the cutting edge

Before arriving at university students will have been powerfully influenced by their
school's approach to learning particular subjects. Yet this is only rarely taken into account by
teachers in higher education, according to new research carried out at Nottingham University,
which could explain why so many students experience problems making the transition.
Historian Alan Booth says there is a growing feeling on both sides of the Atlantic that the
shift from school to university-style learning could be vastly improved. But little consensus exists
about who or what is at fault when the students cannot cope. "School teachers commonly blame
the poor quality of university teaching, citing factors such as large first-year lectures, the
widespread use of inexperienced postgraduate tutors and the general lack of concern for students
in an environment where research is dominant in career progression," Dr Booth said.
Many university tutors on the other hand claim that the school system is failing to prepare
students for what will be expected of them at university. A-level history in particular is seen to be
teacher-dominated, creating a passive dependency culture.

23
But while both sides are bent on attacking each other, little is heard during such exchanges
from the students themselves, according to Dr Booth, who has devised a questionnaire to test the
views of more than 200 first-year history students at Nottingham over a three-year period. The
students were asked about their experience of how history is taught at the outset of their degree
programme. It quickly became clear that teaching methods in school were pretty staid.
About 30 per cent of respondents claimed to have made significant use of primary sources
(few felt very confident in handling them) and this had mostly been in connection with project
work. Only 16 per cent had used video/audio; 2 per cent had experienced field trips and less than
1 per cent had engaged in role-play.
Dr Booth found students and teachers were frequently restricted by the assessment style
which remains dominated by exams. These put obstacles in the way of more adventurous teaching
and active learning, he said. Of the students in the survey just 13 per cent felt their A-level course
had prepared them very well for work at university. Three-quarters felt it had prepared them fairly
well.
One typical comment sums up the contrasting approach: "At A-level we tended to be
spoon-fed with dictated notes and if we were told to do any background reading (which was rare)
we were told exactly which pages to read out of the book".
To test this further the students were asked how well they were prepared in specific skills
central to degree level history study. The answers reveal that the students felt most confident at
taking notes from lectures and organising their notes. They were least able to give an oral
presentation and there was no great confidence in contributing to seminars, knowing how much to
read, using primary sources and searching for texts. Even reading and taking notes from a book
were often problematic. Just 6 per cent of the sample said they felt competent at writing essays,
the staple A level assessment activity.
The personal influence of the teacher was paramount. In fact individual teachers were the
centre of students' learning at A level with some 86 per cent of respondents reporting that their
teachers had been more influential in their development as historians than the students' own
reading and thinking.
The ideal teacher turned out to be someone who was enthusiastic about the subject; a good
clear communicator who encouraged discussion. The ideal teacher was able to develop students
involvement and independence. He or she was approachable and willing to help. The bad teacher,
according to the survey, dictates notes and allows no room for discussion. He or she makes students
learn strings of facts; appears uninterested in the subject and fails to listen to other points of view.
No matter how poor the students judged their preparedness for degree-level study,
however, there was a fairly widespread optimism that the experience would change them
significantly, particularly in terms of their open mindedness and ability to cope with people.

24
But it was clear, Dr Booth said, that the importance attached by many departments to thirdyear teaching could be misplaced. "Very often tutors regard the third year as the crucial time,
allowing postgraduates to do a lot of the earlier teaching. But I am coming to the conclusion that
the first year at university is the critical point of intervention".
Alison Utley, Times Higher Education Supplement. February 6th, 1998.

Exercise 2
-

Read the following text quickly and answer the questions.

o When were X-rays discovered?
o Who discovered them?
o What are the four characteristics of X-rays?
The Discovery of X-rays

Except for a brief description of the Compton effect, and a few other remarks, we have
postponed the discussion of X-rays until the present chapter because it is particularly convenient
to treat X-ray spectra after treating optical spectra. Although this ordering may have given the
reader a distorted impression of the historical importance of X-rays, this impression will be
corrected shortly as we describe the crucial role played by X-rays in the development of modern
physics.
X-rays were discovered in 1895 by Roentgen while studying the phenomena of gaseous
discharge. Using a cathode ray tube with a high voltage of several tens of kilovolts, he noticed that
salts of barium would fluoresce when brought near the tube, although nothing visible was emitted
by the tube. This effect persisted when the tube was wrapped with a layer of black cardboard.
Roentgen soon established that the agency responsible for the fluorescence originated at the point
at which the stream of energetic electrons struck the glass wall of the tube. Because of its unknown
nature, he gave this agency the name X-rays. He found that X-rays could manifest themselves by
darkening wrapped photographic plates, discharging charged electroscopes, as well as by causing
fluorescence in a number of different substances. He also found that X-rays can penetrate
considerable thicknesses of materials of low atomic number, whereas substances of high atomic
number are relatively opaque. Roentgen took the first steps in identifying the nature of X-rays by
using a system of slits to show that (1) they travel in straight lines, and that (2) they are uncharged,
because they are not deflected by electric or magnetic fields.
The discovery of X-rays aroused the interest of all physicists, and many joined in the
investigation of their properties. In 1899 Haga and Wind performed a single slit diffraction
experiment with X-rays which showed that (3) X-rays are a wave motion phenomenon, and, from
the size of the diffraction pattern, their wavelength could be estimated to be 10-8 cm. In 1906

25
Barkla proved that (4) the waves are transverse by showing that they can be polarized by scattering
from many materials.
There is, of course, no longer anything unknown about the nature of X-rays. They are
electromagnetic radiation of exactly the same nature as visible light, except that their wavelength
is several orders of magnitude shorter. This conclusion follows from comparing properties 1
through 4 with the similar properties of visible light, but it was actually postulated by Thomson
several years before all these properties were known. Thomson argued that X-rays are
electromagnetic radiation because such radiation would be expected to be emitted from the point
at which the electrons strike the wall of a cathode ray tube. At this point, the electrons suffer very
violent accelerations in coming to a stop and, according to classical electromagnetic theory, all
accelerated charged particles emit electromagnetic radiations. We shall see later that this
explanation of the production of X-rays is at least partially correct.
In common with other electromagnetic radiations, X-rays exhibit particle-like aspects as
well as wave-like aspects. The reader will recall that the Compton effect, which is one of the most
convincing demonstrations of the existence of quanta, was originally observed with
electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray region of wavelengths.

Reading skills for academic study: Skimming for gist

Exercise 1
-

Read the first and last paragraphs in the following text.

What Is Anthropology?

Anthropology is the study of humankind, especially of Homo sapiens, the biological

species to which we human beings belong. It is the study of how our species evolved from more
primitive organisms; it is also the study of how our species developed a mode of communication
known as language and a mode of social life known as culture. It is the study of how culture
evolved and diversified. And finally, it is the study of how culture, people, and nature Interact
wherever human beings are found.
This book is an Introduction to general anthropology, which is an amalgam of four fields
of study traditionally found within departments of anthropology at major universities. The four
fields are cultural anthropology (sometimes called social anthropology), archaeology,
anthropological linguistics, and physical anthropology. The collaborative effort of these four fields
is needed in order to study our species in evolutionary perspective and in relation to diverse habitats
and cultures.
Cultural anthropology deals with the description and analysis of the forms and styles of
social life of past and present ages. Its subdiscipline, ethnography, systematically describes

26
contemporary societies and cultures. Comparison of these descriptions provides the basis for
hypotheses and theories about the causes of human lifestyles.
Archaeology adds a crucial dimension to this endeavor. By digging up the remains of
cultures of past ages, archaeology studies sequences of social and cultural evolution under diverse
natural and cultural conditions. In the quest for understanding the present-day characteristics of
human existence, for validating or invalidating proposed theories of historical causation, the great
temporal depth of the archaeological record is indispensable.
Anthropological linguistics provides another crucial perspective: the study of the totality
of languages spoken by human beings. Linguistics attempts to reconstruct the historical changes
that have led to the formation of individual languages and families of languages. More
fundamentally, anthropological linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and Its
functions and the way language Influences and is Influenced by other aspects of cultural life.
Anthropological linguistics is concerned with the origin of language and the relationship between
the evolution of language and the evolution of Homo sapiens. And finally, anthropological
linguistics is concerned with the relationship between the evolution of languages and the evolution
and differentiation of human cultures.
Physical anthropology grounds the work of the other anthropological fields in our animal
origins and our genetically determined nature. Physical anthropology seeks to reconstruct the
course of human evolution by studying the fossil remains of ancient human and infrahuman
species. Physical anthropology seeks to describe the distribution of hereditary variations among
contemporary populations and to sort out and measure the relative contributions made by heredity,
environment, and culture to human biology.
Because of Its combination of biological, archaeological, and ethnographic perspectives,
general anthropology is uniquely suited to the study of many problems of vital Importance to the
survival and well-being of our species.
To be sure, disciplines other than anthropology are concerned with the study of human
beings. Our animal nature is the subject of intense research by biologists, geneticists, and
physiologists. In medicine alone, hundreds of additional specialists investigate the human body,
and psychiatrists and psychologists, rank upon rank, seek the essence of the human mind and soul.
Many other disciplines examine our cultural, intellectual, and aesthetic behavior. These disciplines
include sociology, human geography, social psychology, political science, economics, linguistics,
theology, philosophy, musicology, art, literature, and architecture. There are also many "area
specialists," who study the languages and life-styles of particular peoples, nations, or regions:
"Latin Americanists," "Indianists," "Sinologists," and so on. In view of this profusion of disciplines
that describe, explain, and Interpret aspects of human life, what justification can there be for a
single discipline that claims to be the general science of the human species?

27
The Importance of General Anthropology Research and publications are accumulating in
each of the four fields of anthropology at an exponential rate. Few anthropologists nowadays
master more than one field. And anthropologists increasingly find themselves working not with
fellow anthropologists of another field but with members of entirely different scientific or
humanistic specialties. For example, cultural anthropologists interested in the relationship between
cultural practices and the natural environment may be obliged to pay closer attention to agronomy
or ecology than to linguistics. Physical anthropologists interested in the relationship between
human and protohuman fossils may, because of the Importance of teeth in the fossil record, become
more familiar with dentistry journals than with journals devoted to ethnography or linguistics.
Cultural anthropologists interested in the relationship between culture and individual
personality are sometimes more at home professionally with psychiatrists and social psychologists
than with the archaeologists in theIr own university departments. Hence, many more than four
fields are represented in the ongoing research of modern anthropology.
The specialized nature of most anthropological research makes it Imperative that the
general significance of anthropological facts and theories be preserved. This is the task of general
anthropology.
General anthropology does not pretend to survey the entire subject matter of physical,
cultural, archaeological, and linguistic anthropology. Much less does It pretend to survey the work
of the legions of scholars in other disciplines who also study the biological, linguistic, and cultural
aspects of human existence. Rather, it strives to achieve a particular orientation toward all the
human sciences, disciplines, and fields. Perhaps the best word for this orientation is ecumenical.
General anthropology does not teach all that one must know in order to master the four fields or
all that one must know in order to become an anthropologist. Instead, general anthropology teaches
how to evaluate facts and theories about human nature and human culture by placing them in a
total, universalist perspective. In the words of Frederica De Laguna,
Anthropology is the only discipline that offers a conceptual schema for the whole context
of human experience. It is like the carrying frame onto which may be fitted all the several subjects
of a liberal education, and by organizing the load, making it more wieldy and capable of being
carried. (1968, p. 475)
I believe that the importance of general anthropology is that It is panhuman, evolutionary,
and comparative. The previously mentioned disciplines are concerned with only a particular
segment of human experience or a particular time or phase of our cultural or biological
development. But general anthropology is systematically and uncompromisingly comparative. Its
findings are never based upon the study of a single population, race, "tribe," class, or nation.
General anthropology insists first and foremost that conclusions based upon the study of one
particular human group or civilization be checked against the evidence of other groups or
civilizations under both similar and different conditions. In this way the relevance of general
anthropology transcends the interests of any particular "tribe," race, nation, or culture. In

28
anthropological perspective, all peoples and civilizations are fundamentally local and evanescent.
Thus general anthropology is implacably opposed to the insularity and mental constriction of those
who would have themselves and none other represent humanity, stand at the pinnacle of progress,
or be chosen by God or history to fashion the world in their own Image.
Therefore, general anthropology is "relevant" even when It deals with fragments of fossils,
extinct civilizations, remote villages, or exotic customs. The proper study of humankind requires
a knowledge of distant as well as near lands and of remote as well as present times.
Only in this way can we humans hope to tear off the blinders of our local life-styles to look
upon the human condition without prejudice.
Because of Its multidisciplinary, comparative, and diachronic perspective, anthropology holds the
key to many fundamental questions of recurrent and contemporary relevance. It lies peculiarly
within the competence of general anthropology to explicate our species' animal heritage, to define
what is distinctively human about human nature, and to differentiate the natural and the cultural
conditions responsible for competition, conflict, and war. General anthropology is also
strategically equipped to probe the significance of racial factors in the evolution of culture and in
the conduct of contemporary human affairs. General anthropology holds the key to an
understanding of the origins of social inequality - of racism, exploitation, poverty, and
underdevelopment. Overarching all of general anthropology's contributions is the search for the
causes of social and cultural differences and similarities. What is the nature of the determinism
that operates in human history, and what are the consequences of this determinism for individual
freedom of thought and action? To answer these questions is to begin to understand the extent to
which we can increase humanity's freedom and well-being by conscious intervention in the
processes of cultural evolution.
(Culture, people, nature: An introduction to general anthropology (2nd edition), by Marvin
Harris,1975, pp. 1-5, Harperper International Editions)

Notice how reading these sentences gives you a good idea about the meaning of the text. If
you need more details, read the text again.

29
Exercise 2
-

Read the headings in the following text.

The Origin of the Earth

The origin of the earth has puzzled man since ancient times. This problem is astronomical
as well as geological, for the origin of the earth cannot be divorced from that of the component
members of our solar system. The earth is one of nine planets which revolve about the sun and
rotate in the same direction as the sun. The position of the earth among the planets is not
conspicuously prominent. It is the third planet out from the sun and in size is intermediate, for
three planets, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are known to be smaller and Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and
Neptune are larger. About most of the planets revolve smaller bodies called moons or satellites.
The earth and Neptune each have one, Mars two, Uranus four, and Jupiter and Saturn each have
nine. In comparison with the 88,600-mile diameter of Jupiter, the largest planet, and that of the
sun, 864,000 miles, the earth's diameter of 7,900 miles appears small. But, even the largest body
and the greatest distance in our solar system fade into insignificance when compared with the
distances to the fixed stars of our universe. To record these distances the astronomer uses the light
year, which is the distance traveled by light in one year with a velocity of 186,000 miles a second.
Light travels the 93,000,000 miles from the sun to the earth in about 8 minutes and the
2,800,000,000 miles to Neptune in about 4 hours. The nearest star is 4 light years away and the
bright stars seen by us are 10 to 500 light years away. Beyond the Milky Way that comprises our
stellar universe are distributed other nebulae or universes which have been reported to extend
150,000,000 light years into space. The immensity of it all baffles visualization by human
imagination.
NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
The first theory of the origin of the earth based upon astronomical observation was
proposed by the French astronomer Laplace in 1796. It was probably suggested by the rings now
present about the planet Saturn. According to this hypothesis our solar system was originally a
vast nebula of highly heated gas, extending beyond the orbit of the outermost planet and rotating
in the same direction as the planets now revolve. As this nebula, which was more than five billion
miles in extent, lost heat, it contracted. Due to contraction the speed of rotation in-creased and
resulted in flattening at the poles and a bulging at the equator. As further contraction continued,
the speed of rotation increased until the centrifugal force at the equator of the spheroid was equal
to the force of gravity and a ring of particles was left behind. The process continued until 10
successive rings were formed and the central mass became the sun. Each ring revolved as such for
a time and then broke up to form a planet and its satellites. From one ring the 1200 or more
planetoids between Mars and Jupiter were supposed to have formed. According to the hypothesis
the earth was first a globe of highly heated gas, then it became liquid and with further cooling a
crust formed over the liquid interior. From the gas of the original nebula an atmosphere collected
around the earth and vapours condensed to form the water of the oceans. For more than one

30
hundred years this was accepted as the most satisfactory explanation of the earth's origin,
regardless of the increasing number of objections arising against it with advance in knowledge of
Astronomy and Physics. Many of the objections cannot be stated here, but a few will suffice to
show the nature of the difficulties that this simple theory presents. Laws of Physics indicate that
the separation from the gaseous nebula would take place as individual molecules and not as rings.
But, granted that rings could form, it is a mystery how contraction of a ring could produce a
spheroid or yield other rings to form satellites. Since the parent and its satellites were travelling at
the same speed and in the same direction at the time of separation and the parent kept on increasing
its rotation by cooling, all the satellites should have a velocity slower than their parents. Some of
the satellites move with a velocity too rapid or too slow and one in a direction opposite to that
called for by the theory. Even more serious difficulties are encountered when the moment of
momentum is calculated for each stage at which a planet separated or for the entire solar system
expanded as a gas beyond the orbit of Pluto. Not only are the masses of the planets out of
proportion to the moments of momenta, but also the original nebula with the momentum of the
present solar system would not have a rapid enough rotation or a centrifugal force sufficient to
form a ring until it had contracted within the orbit of the innermost planet.
PLANETESIMAL HYPOTHESIS.
In 1905 Chamberlin and Moulton announced the planetesimal hypothesis in which our
solar system is considered to have originated from a spiral nebula. Astronomic photography
records many of these nebulae, each consisting of a central nucleus with two curved arms on
opposite sides composed of masses of matter or knots separated by dark areas. Spectroscopic study
indicates they are composed of solid or liquid particles. Because it was assumed that these particles
revolved about the center of the nebula in elliptical orbits like planets, the name planetesimal was
given to the hypothesis. The spiral arms were formed by explosive forces within the ancestral sun
and by the tidal force of a passing star that approached closely enough to exert a pull on the gases
shot out from the sun. Solar prominences in which gases rise above the sun's surface thousands of
miles are evidence of the explosive forces within our modern sun. During such explosions a star
passed close enough to the ancestral sun to pull out irregular bolts of gas as it reached critical
positions. One bolt was shot out for each planet and one for the planetoids. The light material
forming the large planets was drawn from the near side of the sun and carried farther away from
the sun. The four smaller planets and the planetoids were formed from the tidal bulge on the
opposite side of the sun. The amount of material disrupted to form the planets is calculated at a
fraction of one per cent of the sun's mass. At no time was the passing star close enough to attract
and capture any of the disrupted material. Its approach served to spread out the material far enough
away from the sun that the planetesimals could start revolving in elliptical orbits without being
drawn back into the sun. At this stage the erupted material arranged in two arms partly wound
about the central mass may have resembled a spiral nebula, but on a much smaller scale. Later, the
central mass formed the sun, the larger masses in the arms formed the planets, and smaller ones
the satellites and the planetoids. In the 1928 version of the hypothesis given by Chamberlin the

31
earth was first a bolt of gas erupted from the sun. Like the other bolts it expanded rapidly after
leaving the sun and cooled throughout into solid planetesimals revolving in elliptical orbits so that
by frequent collisions a planet was built up. Metallic constituents were segregated because of their
weight and welded together to form the core, thus giving to the earth's in-tenor the high specific
gravity it is known to possess. The nucleus of the earth grew by the capture of planetesimals; each
collision, occurring whenever elliptical orbits crossed, modified the rate of revolution and resulted
in a more nearly circular orbit. Growth took place slowly so that the earth was never molten. The
heat produced by the impact between nucleus and planetesimals was largely lost during the long
intervals between infalls of small planetesimals. At first the nucleus of the earth was too small to
retain an atmosphere, but as it grew by accretion to about 1/10 of its present mass its gravitative
attraction was strong enough to hold heavy gases. Its internal heat increased due to infall of
planetesimals, self-compression, and radioactivity until local fusion of rock caused volcanic
activity. Volcanic gases collected about the earth as the initial atmosphere. Finally, when saturation
was reached the condensed water vapor collected in depressions on the earth to form the oceans.
The gases now in the atmosphere and waters now in the oceans were originally contained in solid
planetesimals. During continued growth segregation and preservation of the water-covered
planetesimals led to a higher specific gravity for the oceanic segments than for the continental
protuberances. With the development of the atmosphere and the oceans, deposition of
sedimentary rocks commenced before planetesimal accumulation ceased and volcanic activity
reached a climax. The founders of the hypothesis believe that conditions were favorable for life
before the earth was full grown.
TIDAL-DISRUPTION HYPOTHESIS.
Certain features of the planetesimal hypothesis were retained and others completely
changed by Sir James Jeans, astronomer, and Harold Jeffreys, geophysicist, of England, in
developing the tidal-disruption hypothesis. They assumed that the passing star causing our solar
system approached nearer to our ancestral sun than Chamberlin postulated. The disruption of our
sun was due entirely to the tidal force of the passing star and was aided in no way by explosive
action of the sun. From the sun's side nearest the star a long filament of hot gas varying in size and
density was pulled along by the passing star to the orbit of the outermost planet before the tidal
force was released. This streamer was then unstable and broke up into ten segments which
contracted into the nine planets and the planetoids. The original elliptical course of each segment
about the sun was modified by a dense gaseous medium that later leaked away from the streamer
after rounding the orbits. The satellites were produced by tidal strains as each segment made its
first journey around the sun. According to this hypothesis the earth was first a highly heated gas.
As it cooled and became liquid the heavy constituents were drawn toward the center forming shells
that decreased in specific gravity outward. With further cooling a solid crust of light rocks formed
over the liquid interior somewhat before the beginning of geologic time. The first atmosphere was
dense and hot because the temperatures were so high that the chemical compounds inside and

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around the earth could not form. Finally, the temperature decreased so that water vapor could
condense and fill the ocean basins.
ORIGIN OF MATTER.
It is evident from these brief statements that one limitation applies to each of the hypotheses
considered. None is complete in itself, for it does not explain the original matter of the universe
from which the planets evolved. The question of the origin of the nebulae or stars taken as the
starting point in these hypotheses remains unanswered. Scientists and philosophers have pondered
over it. The best answer that has been offered is that it represents the work of an eternal God, who
knows no beginning or end and who controls the orderly arrangement of the Universe.
(This earth of ours, by V. T. Allen, The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1936, pp. 216222)
Notice how reading these headings gives you a good idea about the meaning of the text: a
problem and several possible solutions. If you need more details, read the text again.

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Phonemic chart
Retrieved from https://www.englishclub.com/images/pronunciation/Phonemic-Chart.jpg

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40 Useful Words and Phrases for Top-Notch Essays
Retrieved and adapted from https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/words-phrases-good-essays.html

The secret to a successful essay doesnt just lie in the clever things you talk about and the
way you structure your points.
To be truly brilliant, an essay needs to utilize the right language. You could make a great
point, but if its not intelligently articulated, you almost neednt have bothered. Developing the
language skills to build an argument and to write persuasively is crucial if youre to write
outstanding essays every time. In this article, were going to equip you with the words and phrases
you need to write a top-notch essay, along with examples of how to utilize them. Its by no means
an exhaustive list, and there will often be other ways of using the words and phrases we describe
that we wont have room to include, but there should be more than enough below to help you make
an instant improvement to your essay-writing skills whether youre a native English speaker or
taking your first steps into writing essays in English.
General explaining
Lets start by looking at language for general explanations of complex points.
1. In order to
Usage: In order to can be used to introduce an explanation for the purpose of an argument.
Example: In order to understand X, we need first to understand Y.
2. In other words
Usage: Use in other words when you want to express something in a different way (more
simply), to make it easier to understand, or to emphasise or expand on a point.
Example: Frogs are amphibians. In other words, they live on the land and in the water.
3. To put it another way
Usage: This phrase is another way of saying in other words, and can be used in particularly
complex points, when you feel that an alternative way of wording a problem may help the reader
achieve a better understanding of its significance.
Example: Plants rely on photosynthesis. To put it another way, they will die without the sun.
4. That is to say
Usage: That is and that is to say can be used to add further detail to your explanation, or to be
more precise.
Example: Whales are mammals. That is to say, they must breathe air.

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5. To that end
Usage: Use to that end or to this end in a similar way to in order to or so.
Example: Zoologists have long sought to understand how animals communicate with each other.
To that end, a new study has been launched that looks at elephant sounds and their possible
meanings.
Adding additional information to support a point
Students often make the mistake of using synonyms of and each time they want to add
further information in support of a point theyre making, or to build an argument. Here are some
cleverer ways of doing this.
6. Moreover
Usage: Employ moreover at the start of a sentence to add extra information in support of a point
youre making.
Example: Moreover, the results of a recent piece of research provide compelling evidence in
support of
7. Furthermore
Usage: This is also generally used at the start of a sentence, to add extra information.
Example: Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that
8. What is more
Usage: This is used in the same way as moreover and furthermore.
Example: Whats more, this isnt the only evidence that supports this hypothesis.
9. Likewise
Usage: Use likewise when you want to talk about something that agrees with what youve just
mentioned.
Example: Scholar A believes X. Likewise, Scholar B argues compellingly in favour of this point
of view.
10. Similarly
Usage: Use similarly in the same way as likewise.
Example: Audiences at the time reacted with shock to Beethovens new work, because it was
very different to what they were used to. Similarly, we have a tendency to react with surprise to
the unfamiliar.

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11. Another key thing to remember
Usage: Use the phrase another key point to remember or another key fact to remember to
introduce additional facts without using the word also.
Example: As a Romantic, Blake was a proponent of a closer relationship between humans and
nature. Another key point to remember is that Blake was writing during the Industrial Revolution,
which had a major impact on the world around him.
12. As well as
Usage: Use as well as instead of also or and.
Example: Scholar A argued that this was due to X, as well as Y.
13. Not only but also
Usage: This wording is used to add an extra piece of information, often something thats in some
way more surprising or unexpected than the first piece of information.
Example: Not only did Edmund Hillary have the honour of being the first to reach the summit of
Everest, but he was also appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
14. Coupled with
Usage: Used when considering two or more arguments at a time.
Example: Coupled with the literary evidence, the statistics paint a compelling view of
15. Firstly, secondly, thirdly
Usage: This can be used to structure an argument, presenting facts clearly one after the other.
Example: There are many points in support of this view. Firstly, X. Secondly, Y. And thirdly, Z.
16. Not to mention/to say nothing of
Usage: Not to mention and to say nothing of can be used to add extra information with a bit
of emphasis.
Example: The war caused unprecedented suffering to millions of people, not to mention its impact
on the countrys economy.
Words and phrases for demonstrating contrast
When youre developing an argument, you will often need to present contrasting or
opposing opinions or evidence it could show this, but it could also show this, or X says this,
but Y disagrees. This section covers words you can use instead of the but in these examples, to
make your writing sound more intelligent and interesting.

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17. However
Usage: Use however to introduce a point that disagrees with what youve just said.
Example: Scholar A thinks this. However, Scholar B reached a different conclusion.
18. On the other hand
Usage: Usage of this phrase includes introducing a contrasting interpretation of the same piece of
evidence, a different piece of evidence that suggests something else, or an opposing opinion.
Example: The historical evidence appears to suggest a clear-cut situation. On the other hand, the
archaeological evidence presents a somewhat less straightforward picture of what happened that
day.
19. Having said that
Usage: Used in a similar manner to on the other hand or but.
Example: The historians are unanimous in telling us X, an agreement that suggests that this
version of events must be an accurate account. Having said that, the archaeology tells a different
story.
20. By contrast/in comparison
Usage: Use by contrast or in comparison when youre comparing and contrasting pieces of
evidence.
Example: Scholar As opinion, then, is based on insufficient evidence. By contrast, Scholar Bs
opinion seems more plausible.
21. Then again
Usage: Use this to cast doubt on an assertion.
Example: Writer A asserts that this was the reason for what happened. Then again, its possible
that he was being paid to say this.
22. That said
Usage: This is used in the same way as then again.
Example: The evidence ostensibly appears to point to this conclusion. That said, much of the
evidence is unreliable at best.
23. Yet
Usage: Use this when you want to introduce a contrasting idea.

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Example: Much of scholarship has focused on this evidence. Yet not everyone agrees that this is
the most important aspect of the situation.
Adding a proviso or acknowledging reservations
Sometimes, you may need to acknowledge a short falling in a piece of evidence, or add a
proviso. Here are some ways of doing so.
24. Despite this
Usage: Use despite this or in spite of this when you want to outline a point that stands
regardless of a shortfalling in the evidence.
Example: The sample size was small, but the results were important despite this.
25. With this in mind
Usage: Use this when you want your reader to consider a point in the knowledge of something
else.
Example: Weve seen that the methods used in the 19th century study did not always live up to
the rigorous standards expected in scientific research today, which makes it difficult to draw
definite conclusions. With this in mind, lets look at a more recent study to see how the results
compare.
26. Provided that
Usage: This means on condition that. You can also say providing that or just providing to
mean the same thing.
Example: We may use this as evidence to support our argument, provided that we bear in mind
the limitations of the methods used to obtain it.
27. In view of/in light of
Usage: These phrases are used when something has shed light on something else.
Example: In light of the evidence from the 2013 study, we have a better understanding of
28. Nonetheless
Usage: This is similar to despite this.
Example: The study had its limitations, but it was nonetheless groundbreaking for its day.
29. Nevertheless
Usage: This is the same as nonetheless.
Example: The study was flawed, but it was important nevertheless.

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30. Notwithstanding
Usage: This is another way of saying nonetheless.
Example: Notwithstanding the limitations of the methodology used, it was an important study in
the development of how we view the workings of the human mind.
Giving examples
Good essays always back up points with examples, but its going to get boring if you use
the expression for example every time. Here are a couple of other ways of saying the same thing.
31. For instance
Example: Some birds migrate to avoid harsher winter climates. Swallows, for instance, leave the
UK in early winter and fly south
32. To give an illustration
Example: To give an illustration of what I mean, lets look at the case of
Signifying importance
When you want to demonstrate that a point is particularly important, there are several ways of
highlighting it as such.
33. Significantly
Usage: Used to introduce a point that is loaded with meaning that might not be immediately
apparent.
Example: Significantly, Tacitus omits to tell us the kind of gossip prevalent in Suetonius
accounts of the same period.
34. Notably
Usage: This can be used to mean significantly (as above), and it can also be used interchangeably
with in particular (the example below demonstrates the first of these ways of using it).
Example: Actual figures are notably absent from Scholar As analysis.
35. Importantly
Usage: Use importantly interchangeably with significantly.
Example: Importantly, Scholar A was being employed by X when he wrote this work, and was
presumably therefore under pressure to portray the situation more favourably than he perhaps
might otherwise have done.

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Summarising
Youve almost made it to the end of the essay, but your work isnt over yet. You need to
end by wrapping up everything youve talked about, showing that youve considered the
arguments on both sides and reached the most likely conclusion. Here are some words and phrases
to help you.
36. In conclusion
Usage: Typically used to introduce the concluding paragraph or sentence of an essay, summarising
what youve discussed in a broad overview.
Example: In conclusion, the evidence points almost exclusively to Argument A.
37. Above all
Usage: Used to signify what you believe to be the most significant point, and the main takeaway
from the essay.
Example: Above all, it seems pertinent to remember that
38. Persuasive
Usage: This is a useful word to use when summarising which argument you find most convincing.
Example: Scholar As point that Constanze Mozart was motivated by financial gain seems to
me to be the most persuasive argument for her actions following Mozarts death.
39. Compelling
Usage: Use in the same way as persuasive above.
Example: The most compelling argument is presented by Scholar A.
40. All things considered
Usage: This means taking everything into account.
Example: All things considered, it seems reasonable to assume that