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{\it Remarks for first class 8/31/2016}
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   Welcome again to the 2016-2017 {\it Core Human Questions Cluster} of Montserrat.  At
our ``Meet and Greet'' the CHQ faculty introduced ourselves so you would start to get to 
know all of the CHQ faculty; you'll
get to know the instructor of your individual Montserrat seminar even better over the next
few days as your seminars meet for the first time. I don't think many incoming first year
students really appreciate all of the design of Montserrat at first or until you see
it in action.  In any case, even if you didn't do so intentionally, in the CHQ, 
``you chose the best cluster'' and you'll see how the system works over the next weeks
 and months. 

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I am John Little from the Mathematics and Computer Science department.
I'm excited to be teaching the seminars called {\it Mathematical Thinking} this fall, 
and {\it Thinking About Mathematics} next spring.  The best way to 
explain why I have been a pretty regular participant in Montserrat almost since the start
is to say that, while I {\it am} a mathematician, I am not {\it only} a mathematician.  

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As a teacher of mathematics, I am also very concerned that the way 
mathematics is often taught today at the elementary and secondary levels in the US 
doesn't show students what mathematics is ``really about'' 
and it doesn't do enough to encourage young people to exercise
their mathematical creativity.  To me, {\it figuring things out in creative ways} is the real
purpose and point of mathematics.  Not seeing that because of an over-emphasis on 
acquiring rote skills for high-stakes tests can tend to kill any interest students 
might have in mathematics or any satisfaction they might get from studying the subject.

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I'm also very interested in how mathematics connects with other areas.  That's not just the ``obvious''
connections with the physical, biological, or social sciences, where mathematics serves
as a language and a tool for modeling the ``real world,'' describing relationships, and
predicting the behavior of systems.  I'm also very interested in the more subtle connections 
between mathematics and art, mathematics and music, in the ways we can see the creativity of 
human minds working along parallel tracks, some we explicitly label mathematical and some where 
that idenfication might be less immediate, but where the same kinds of thinking are taking place.

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So I'm hoping to give the 16 students in my seminar a small taste of what I find most
interesting and exciting about mathematics by looking for examples of mathematical 
thinking across many cultures and in (perhaps) unexpected places -- certainly 
in the ways all human societies have developed ways to count and measure space and time, 
but also in the ways mathematical thinking shows up in the ways we conceptualize
our family relationships, design our living environments, and create games and puzzles
to challenge our minds.  Next semester we will take a look at where some of the mathematics
you all learned in high school comes from historically and how mathematicians and others
think about the subject.  Some of our CHQ common readings will also have strong
mathematical themes so we'll be ``right in the thick'' of coming to understand them.  
I'm excited to get started and I hope you feel the same way!
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