well, there's future usefulness and practicality to motivate your homeschoolers. and there's also in-the-moment fun, beauty, and joy of doing it. check out Strogatz's recent New York Times column:
"I bet I can guess your favorite math subject in high school. "It was geometry. "So many people I’ve met over the years have expressed affection for that subject. Arithmetic and algebra — not many takers there. But geometry, well, there’s something about it that brings a twinkle to the eye." see the full article at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/square-dancing/ beyond being cool, maybe geometry helps develop spatial imagery and visualization? --Jeremy On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:40 PM, <ch...@seberino.org> wrote: > I'm teaching high school math to homeschoolers and I'm looking for how to > make > geometry year meaningful. > > I'm having a "crisis of confidence" because from my viewpoint, algebra was > 10x > more useful for future math and science work. > > The only thing I can remember that was useful from geometry was a few > volume > and area formulas. That can justify maybe a month but not a whole YEAR of > geometry!?!? > > cs > > P.S. Yes yes I know that geometry is meant to teach logical reasoning. > Maybe > one can get that from chess, debate club and other activities as well if > not better? People also say geometry is where you learn proofs. Couldn't > proofs be just as easily emphasized in all the other math classes? > > -- > _______________________________________ > > Christian Seberino, Ph.D. > Email: ch...@seberino.org > _______________________________________ > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >
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