History of Babylonian Word Problems Reflection

 If we start to question the practicality of anything that we learn in school, I believe that there are not many things that all students will be using in their daily lives in the future. For instance, very few number of people read poetry or Shakespeare and even less students will ever talk about Canadian importance of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The word problems given in the classrooms nowadays, during Babylonian times and ancient Egyptian times are most often not similar to real life situations at all. However, I do think that they have their place in education. First, relating to the article about Babylonian algebra, I think that the Babylonian teachers did not have a choice but to ask word problems to test their students’ knowledge since they did not have the concept of unknown variables, so they could not set up an algebraic equation as we know today. Besides the ancient times, word problems makes it easier for the students to visualize the problems which helps students to understand the concept more easily. For instance, if I ask a student who has never learned how to add fractions to add a quarter with three quarters, a lot of 10 year olds (which is the age that they start to learn adding fractions) won’t be able to give me the answer. However, if I were to ask them how much pizza have you eaten, if you ate a quarter of vegetarian pizza and three quarters of meat lovers, they would most likely be able to tell me that they have eaten one whole pizza. As it can be seen in the example, word problems often ask to solve a situation that is most likely not to happen in real life, but it can help students to understand the concept more approachable.

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