[오밥뉴스]”I get angry when I teach my children too” A mathematician’s unexpected teaching method

Ask your parents for directions. The moment we become parents, we start the life of a parent without knowing what a parent is. Like our parents, we struggle to feed, clothe, and teach, and we are full of thoughts that something is wrong. Becoming a parent is a question and answer to the question of how to understand and love myself and the child, and how we will carry out this tremendous task over the course of our lives.

Today’s table head news, Obab News delivers 『Talking about future parents』 every Monday for worried parents. The first episode is Geum Jong-hae (64), a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the High School of Science and Technology.

“How do you take a dot without size? How do you draw a line without thickness?”
I was speechless. It may be because he lived the life of a mathematician who gave up early on. I remember learning that if I just draw a line from point to point, it becomes a line segment. Professor Geum Jong-hae asked a question he had never thought of before.
On the 29th of June, the professor’s room on the 5th floor of the Academy of Advanced Sciences in Hoegi-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul. It was about time to sit down and start the interview. He, who is also the president of the Korean Mathematical Society, started talking about mathematics, saying, “Mathematics is a science that can explain realistic things because it is unrealistic,” while the reporter crouched without giving an answer.

Professor Geum laughed. “Mathematicians don’t like calculations,” he said. Calculation and math are completely different things. He said to the right door, “What is mathematics then?” “When people say they are good at math, they think of calculations. However, I am not only doing the given calculations, I am creating new mathematics. Mathematicians are like painters and poets. You create an expression that no one knows about, and you add imagination, so-called ‘creativity’, to the proof process. It’s about predicting that there will be a relationship between things that seem unrelated.”

He said that mathematics is the same, just as a sculptor has to hit countless stones in order to realize the statue he has drawn in his mind. “It’s a very painful process,” he said, using the brain as an experimental device. The conversation naturally led to the study of mathematics, saying, “There is a joy that is difficult to taste in school mathematics.

He is considered a scholar in the field of algebraic geometry. Middle and high school math textbooks are stacked on the bookshelf of the lab. These are the textbooks he wrote. The numeracy problem of the college entrance exam was also in his hands, but he was not a child who liked mathematics from the beginning. He was born in Wonju, Gangwon Province, under the influence of his military father, but grew up in Gunsan. The second of three sons and one daughter, he was known as a stubborn child who did not lose fights in the neighborhood. When the seawater receded and muddy fields were exposed, it was common to go out with the younger brothers to catch jjangeo (conger eel), flounder, and crab. I saw the ‘Reference Book’ when I was in 4th grade. It was the ‘Dong-A Dept.’ with all the subjects that the homeroom teacher provided in the classroom.

Geum Jong-hae, a professor of mathematics at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Chairman of the Korean Mathematical Society), is interviewing the JoongAng Ilbo in the laboratory of the professor at Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul. Reporter Kim Seong-ryong

I shot the beach until the sun went down, but I was confident. Studying, I had the confidence that ‘I can do well if I just do it’. Gunsan Middle School entered after taking the exam. One day in sophomore year, a friend brought a math problem to me during recess. It was ‘I’m having a hard time, so please tell me’. Since I had to think and solve, I read math textbooks and studied the necessary content to solve the ‘friend problem’. After doing it once or twice, more and more friends asked. He said, “Mathematics was fun when I heard the sound of ‘Wow, that’s cool’ when you solve a math problem well.”

When I was in high school, I dreamed of becoming a prosecutor. His parents wanted him to go to law school, opponents, or medical school, but his path turned out differently. In his second year of high school, his math teacher called him. “You seem to have a talent for math, so try being a mathematician.” He didn’t even know he had a job as a mathematician, and he said, ‘Huh? Are you talking about becoming a school math teacher?’ Thought. Others told him that he was “good at math”, and because of that, he worked hard, so he became attached to him. Temperament also had an impact. If the problem doesn’t go away, it hangs for a few days. Then his life became solid as a mathematician.

Geum Jong-hae, a professor of mathematics at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Chairman of the Korean Mathematical Society), is interviewing the JoongAng Ilbo in the laboratory of the professor at Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul. Reporter Kim Seong-ryong

Professor Geum said ‘testing math’ and ‘mathematics’ separately. “Being good at the math on the exam doesn’t make you a good mathematician. There are mathematicians who became famous mathematicians because they had good ideas even if they made a mistake in the street calculations. There are many people who are good at math. It’s not because I don’t know what to do, it’s not because I can’t do it, it’s because I’m thinking ahead, so there are many cases where I’m wrong. So, when I ask world-class mathematicians, there are cases where they said that they didn’t do well in the ‘mathematics test’ when they were in school. A world-famous math professor who became a professor at a prestigious US university also said that he couldn’t do the math for the exam.” He also added a sense of pity for the many students he met at the pulpit. He said that he saw many cases where children who had been running for prior learning did not adapt to the university.

The only way to get your child to love math is to have fun. In this sense, he said that he opposes ‘early private education’. This is because if children start doing good through private tutoring too early, they may encounter only ‘unsolvable problems’ without end. There are cases where so-called ‘problems for problems’ are raised, but in this case, it means that only the children’s self-esteem is lowered. He said, “Mathematics is the ability to think, and it is a science that develops the ability to rationally judge what is the optimal solution when a certain situation arises, whether there is anything missing or duplicated in finding the solution, not memorizing knowledge.” said

He also criticized the mathematics education system. ‘They say that math is difficult for children, so the thickness of textbooks is gradually reduced.’ “Teaching should not take away the opportunity to learn mathematics by teaching,” he said. No matter how interesting the subject is, taking the test is stressful, but it meant that the test could be given easily without emphasis on evaluation, but the emphasis should be placed on teaching. “There are more students who dislike mathematics and science than students who like it,” he said. “Parents may think that they cannot go to a good university because mathematics is difficult, but once the level of education is lowered, it is difficult to raise it again. It is a very dangerous story for the whole country and society.”

Geum Jong-hae, a professor of mathematics at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Chairman of the Korean Mathematical Society), is interviewing the JoongAng Ilbo in the laboratory of the professor at Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul. Reporter Kim Seong-ryong

He has two grown sons. The eldest son majored in economics and the younger son majored in industrial psychology. “It all has to do with math,” he said with a bright expression on his face. When I asked how he taught math to children, he got a surprising answer. “In other words, he was a ‘lazy type’ father, but he took care of math studies ‘sometimes not often'” he said. “I get angry at times,” he said. It’s the same as what I explained, and if you learn it properly, you would know it, of course, I thought you would know, but if the child doesn’t know, I get angry.” He laughed. Professor Geum explained, “Still, the best way to study is to wait until you decide to do it yourself. In fact, I have a strong belief that studying is done alone, so I told them to ask questions because I didn’t know, but there aren’t many times when I sit and teach them.”

In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, which is represented by artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, it is said that ‘you cannot succeed just by studying well’, but what do you think of him? Professor Geum said, “It is attitude and attitude that determines success or failure.” “Studying well and liking are different. People I like end up doing well and succeeding.”

Geum Jong-hae, a professor of mathematics at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Chairman of the Korean Mathematical Society), is interviewing the JoongAng Ilbo in the laboratory of the professor at Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul. Reporter Kim Seong-ryong

By Kim Hyun-ye, staff reporter hykim@joongang.co.kr