The goal of Myths & Maths is to enable students, from kindergarten to middle school, to improve their perception and practice of mathematics through storytelling.
For most of us, mathematics is primarily logic and calculation, an idea contested by mathematicians themselves. For mathematician David Bessis (author of Mathematica, an adventure at the heart of ourselves, Seuil, 2022), imagination is “the central technique in mathematics.”
The difficulty of teaching mathematics undoubtedly lies in the invisible nature of imagination. But then, how can it be taught, since it is a personal psychological activity that eludes imitation, the basis of learning? It’s impossible to imitate what happens in another’s mind! In mathematics, it’s up to each individual to find a “path of images” in their own mind, through experimentation, by following and developing their intuition. But how can we give form and coherence to imagination? Through storytelling. Because mathematics is a subject that is constructed through the narrative we tell. More than an art of handling numbers, mathematics is above all a way of seeing things, that is, a practice in which playing with mental images allows each person to modify their way of perceiving the world.
Stories are “paths of images,” according to anthropologist Nicole Belmont. Perfectly logical narratives, they feature characters without psychological depth. How can we tell a story orally in our own words if we don’t have the mental images? Traditional storytellers developed the ability to visualize narrative patterns, which they often repeated exactly, serving as a basis for constructing their narratives. Some storytellers explained that they followed the character in their story, throughout the narration, on a path of images, looking over their shoulder. This is how his journey unfolded through different locations located on a map representing all the possible events in the story. The storyteller moves, as if in a labyrinth, across this global map. This mapped, two-dimensional vision is not linear. It is useful for connecting different ideas and generating thought.
This is the whole challenge, the key to this project: to encourage students to practice creating mental images through stories and imaginative narratives to enable them to progress in mathematics.
Myths and Math aims to change preconceived notions about mathematics, which too often make it an intimidating and abstract discipline, reserved for an elite. How? By giving pride of place to emotion, intuition, pleasure, and curiosity to help all students progress and reduce inequalities. Connecting mathematics to thought and language, from the earliest grades onward.