| Timothy Gowers had a similar point at https://plus.google.com/+TimothyGowers0/posts/4bkfusUoXot (dead link now): > if one asks children a question such as the following: a number 35 bus pulls up at a bus stop and 8 passengers get on; what is the age of the bus driver? A large percentage of children, their minds numbed by years of symbol manipulation, will give the answer 43. This is a tragedy: rather than being trained to think, these children have been trained to do the opposite. Also here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/11/maths-... This is basic stimulus-response behaviour: school education is effectively a game that the children are playing to win points, and within that environment “thinking” is wasteful and disincentivized. (See also: Lockhart's Lament https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament...., the heart-breaking How Children Fail by John Holt, etc.) Gowers also had a couple of posts on a very different way of teaching mathematics: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/how-should-mathemati... https://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/a-trip-to-watford-gr... |