Reflection of "Citizenship Education in the Context of Mathematics"

I have never thought about the mathematic’s role in citizenship education until I read Elaine Simmt’s article, “Citizenship Education in the Context of School Mathematics”. The article really opened my mind.
Mathematic education and citizenship education are both very important for secondary-school students. Although students spend a lot of time in school every day, they also belong to our societies. Math teachers do have the responsibility to get the citizenship education involved into their classroom by posing problems, demanding for explanation, and encouraging conversation in classrooms.
In addition, I think that having democratic environment in a classroom is the key to leading mathematic teaching to prepare the students for citizenship. First, after posing problems, teachers should allow the students to feel free to ask questions, give various solutions, as well as negotiate and judge the appropriateness and adequacy of their own and peers’ questions and solutions. Second, when students give their explanations, the teachers should encourage them express their ideas in various ways instead of just judging the explanation are right or wrong. Finally, in order to make students interact with each other through mathematical conversation, such as offering examples and conjectures, as well as posing problems, the teachers should provide democratic environment in the classroom which makes everybody feels free to talk.