In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Muriel Strand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>(warning: rant ahead)
>nobody's talking about the kind of teacher who's leading this [ideal
>pythagorean] activity. until elementary school teachers are paid as well as
>corporate VPs, few of them will have the kind of mental energy and the
>combination of interpersonal and mathematical skills that will make robert's
>comments relevant to the typical classroom. avoiding the win-lose pitfall is
>crucial; if kids get too frustrated (if it's too much like work and not enough
>like play) and if they don't know where they're supposed to go or if the answer
>is withheld for too long, they'll just learn how to not-care and not how to have
>fun with math.
It would not help to pay them more. With most people getting
degrees in anything but mathematics, and taking the curricula
to prepare for graduate work, not knowing much about what a
proof is, what even the structures of the integers and real
numbers are, the people to be paid cannot be found, and are
also needed where they are now being used.
We CAN teach sound conceptual and rigorous mathematics to
children, but efforts to teach these to teachers have been
singularly unsuccessful. Those who have learned facts and
routines by memorization, discovery, etc., are possibly in
a worse position to understand structure than small children.
It is not just in mathematics, but in language as well.
A small amount of structure greatly reduces the amount of
details which need to be learned.
We need to teach at least the ones who show ability this
structural and conceptual material, and to require that
those going into the teaching of language and mathematics,
even at the primary level, to understand it. The most
important part of mathematics for the ordinary user is
the ability to translate other problems into precise
mathematical ones using symbols; the even more general
use of symbols belongs with beginning reading.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
