[telegraph]

I have to respectfully disagree with you. It's true that there is a large group of kids who would be better served if their teachers focused more on applications; however, I think that there's an equally large (if not bigger) group of students for whom learning about applications is not helpful. When I was in public school, my teachers always made an effort to highlight how the math we were learning could be applied to real world problem -- the end result was that often the struggling students would say "You use this to build rocket ships? Well I'm NEVER going to do that... I give up."

The most important thing we can do is change our attitude. It's hard to develop an interest in something that you find difficult when you're receiving mixed messages from all of the adults in your life; when adults will demand you get better grades all while telling you it's okay because "math is for nerds" or "not everyone can do math."

I did well (good grades, but it's not like I was Terence Tao or anything) in math in school, and my teachers in other subjects, my coaches, my friends' parents, etc, acted like I was a freak because of it. You can't give a high five with one hand while you're pointing and laughing with the other. This is the attitude that must change before we can raise a generation who take pride in developing math skills.

[Shooter]

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the mixed signals thing. I definitely experienced that phenomena because of my science pursuits. I can also understand your point about how certain students would develop a "Well I'm NEVER going to do that..." attitude when shown certain specific examples of math. But a more practical applications approach - no matter how poor the examples - should still interest more students than a "I don't know why you have to do it, but just do it" approach.

I think your disagreement with me comes about in part because you are thinking in more concrete, specific terms than I am. You're correct that "You can use this math to build rocket ships" would probably not have helped me if I didn't have an interest in rocket ships. But a teacher wouldn't necessarily use just a single type of example. Beyond that, I'm saying that my teachers never explained the overarching concepts of math and how they were related or explained - in GENERAL terms - what it could be used to do. Each math 'concept' was presented as a discrete type of chore that you completed in order to satisfy some perverse deity for no apparent reason. Math was not presented as a language of logic and reason that could be used to solve practical problems, but as a completely made up busywork exercise. I might as well have spent my time memorizing Klingon grammar rules. I literally didn't realize calculus was the study of change until college, even after having passed a course in it! Maybe you had a better experience with math instructors, and it is just difficult for you to understand how woefully bad some practicing math instructors actually are?

[telegraph]

Re: my experience with math instructors, you're probably right. I do think that there's a certain sort of base level of application information that should be imparted with any given mathematical topic (for instance, that calculus is about change! Wow, I'm sorry you had such awful teachers), I just think that focus on applications is a method that's been tried already and just hasn't seemed to improve math education enough.