On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 11:28:29AM -0400, Curt Howland wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Tuesday 02 May 2006 02:09, "Roberto C. Sanchez" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was heard to say: > > - Public schools become a ground for experimenting with social > > policy (look at the "progressive" military personnel policies > > during the Clinton administration) > > A perfect example: New Math! > > Even if it weren't for any other fad of social engineering being > shoveled out in the "public school", New Math alone would be reason > for razing every "public school" to the ground so that no stone was > left standing upon another, and salt sown on the ruins. >
When New Math was taken out of the hands of mathematicians in the sixties and handed to bureaucrats who codifed it into the way math should be taught from worn-out textbooks for the next forty years, it fails. It becomes old math very quickly. In fact the emphasis on set theory as a foundation for mathematics is nineteenth century math, not even 20th. I've seen what happened to new math here in Quebec and I'm all for it. They have just kept on renewing it, based on feedback from experience and mathematicians. The parents are told not to try to help the children with their math homework. They are warned that they will not understand it. (actually, though, if the parent is a professional mathematician, he may be capable) The program starts out with logic, with thinking, with precise reasing about precise concepts. No, not formal logic. The reasoning is intuituve. The assignments are puzzles. The means of solution are trial and error, intuition, whatever. They are taught not to be disappointed if the first think they try doesn't work, but to try something else. Very results-oriented. But for each problem, it is crystal clear what constitutes a solution and what doesn't. In the earliest grades, the puzzles often involve geometrical arrangements of brightly coloured objects in two or three dimensions. It is fuin. Extra time to use them is often provided as a reward for success in other, nonmathematical subjects. Over the years, the puzzles become more abstract, numbers are introduced, and so forth. The first contacts with addition and multiplication are in the form of puzzles, of gradually increasing difficulty. Concepts are presented in a variety of forms. The children are challenged to figure out, say, addition of two-digit numbers before the are taught how. It's just another puzzle. They don't all come up with the same methods, but most of them figure it out before they are taught an official procedure -- but, yes, a few need to have it made explicit. And the result is students who (mostly) understand the point of what they are doing. As for doing it *well*, as for memorizing the ultiplication tables and such, well, my kids were shaky on that until the started to have to *use* their math skills for something that mattered to them. Then performance suddenly shot up. The purpose of education is no longer to learn all the facts you will need in your life, to learn how to find out facts when you need them. Of course, learning to learn requires practice, so the school is still involved with facts. But the emphasis is no longer on memorization. -- hendrik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
