| For those who aren't aware of it, I think Lockhart's Lament [1] is definitely worth a read. Here's an excerpt: "How many people actually use any of this “practical math” they supposedly learn in school? Do you think carpenters are out there using trigonometry? How many adults remember how to divide fractions, or solve a quadratic equation? Obviously the current practical training program isn’t working, and for good reason: it is excruciatingly boring, and nobody ever uses it anyway. So why do people think it’s so important? I don’t see how it’s doing society any good to have its members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of hating them. It might do some good, though, to show them something beautiful and give them an opportunity to enjoy being
creative, flexible, open-minded thinkers— the kind of thing a real mathematical education might provide." For some reason, the math curriculum is completely about learning techniques, which roughly correspond to formulaic manipulation of symbols. We basically learn to apply algorithms for manipulating symbols, and we do it over and over again. And of course, this is easy to test. But it's also the absolute least important aspect we need to know! It's the part that doesn't involve thinking. And so we end up with some farce of an education where we learn the procedures without the context why people created them in the first place! Take the quadratic formula: something wholly useless in real life, but taught to every middle-schooler in the US. Somehow, even though the name has "quad" in it, we learn it without learning the context of the ancient Greek concept of quadrature, and problems relating to whether it is possible to find a rectangle with a certain area and perimeter. In the derivation, we "complete the square", but nobody draws the said square! And then we do a hundred problems involving applying the quadratic formula, which is neither enlightening nor useful. [1] http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsL... |