|
It's funny, I also think Euclidean geometry is a bad way to introduce proofs, but my reason is different from what you just said. I think what you just said is primarily about "writing proofs", which is certainly important, but I'm not sure it's the fundamental issue with Euclidean geoemtry (and I know that not everyone learns Euclidean geometry and comes away from it writing proofs as you did). It sounds like you came out of your highschool Euclidean geometry experience with good logic skills but poor communication skills (?). The issue with Euclidean geometry as an entrance to proofs and logic is two-fold. First, the definitions and axioms of Euclidean geometry are incomplete in many ways. Many definitions, such as that of a line, cannot be understood from what is written in Euclid but require a significant amount of intution pumping to be able to know how to properly work with them. Thus, the fundamental definitions in Euclidean geometry are bad examples of what a definition in math should be, and we are already starting on very rocky footing. Moreover, the axioms, as they are presented in Euclid or common modern educational sources, are not sufficient to do what is claimed. For example, the proof of postulate 1 already has a logical gap because there is no axiom which guarantees the existence of a point lying at the intersection of the two circles one has drawn. Again, the argument relies crucially on a figure, which is the intuition pump used in all of Euclid, but the picture is not based on any of the axioms, so it is reinforcing a bad way of thinking about proofs that is intuitive and not at all focused on carefully using definitions and axioms. (Of course, one can fix Euclidean geometry to be rigorous by adding many extra axioms, but the resulting axiomatic system is much more complex and is not at all suitable for highschool students, except possibly the brightest.) The second, somewhat more minor, issue I have with Euclidean geometry, related to the first, is that the way arguments are phrased, and the use of figures to illustrate, often hides many logical steps that are only implicit. In particular, I am thinking of the implicit use of qunatifiers in statements that are proven in Euclidean geometry. This is an issue because as soon as one moves on to proofs in any other context encountered by students, e.g. in first year undergrad, it becomes much more difficult to do things correctly while only thinking about quantifiers implicitly. It would be much more beneficial, in my opinion, to have the first introduction to proofs be a topic that is much, much simpler (such as integers) where the focus can be purely on how statements are formed with quantifiers, how strategies of proof are determined based on the form of the statement and which quantifiers are involved, and how the (much shorter and simpler, and not requiring an intuition pump to use correctly) definitions and basic properties of that topic can be applied in a proof. The root of all of this is the importance in proofs of properly using the definitions and axioms. Students in highschool, except the most talented, just are not careful thinkers and will revert to their preferred lazy way of thinking (such as pictures and vague ideas) as soon as you give them the opening. In my experience, the only way to force students to understand how to properly prove things is to pull out the rug of their intuition, even briefly, for just long enough so that they learn how to do things without it. Then later, once they have properly adopted the mindset of using the definitions, you can let the intuition back in. For context, I don't know if any of what I just said reflects how Euclidean geometry is taught in, say, Caifornia. I only know this from the perspective of having tried to incorporate Euclidean geometry in an undergraduate proofs course (in Canada where Euclidean geometry hasn't been part of the grade school curriculum for some time). |