Haim
Posts:
7,807
Registered:
12/6/04
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Re: Why More Students Rely on Tutors
Posted:
Oct 4, 2010 7:10 PM
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Jonathan Groves Posted: Oct 1, 2010 4:48 PM
>Again, I challenge you to find one of our statements
>that makes the claim that we will fix all the problems
>in math education with a single textbook.
Jonathan,
I am sorry for the misunderstanding. You do not claim to solve all the ills of math education and I do not mean to imply that. With my hyperbole (always a mistake in this forum), I mean to say that you will not solve any problem with your textbook.
I believe you will not solve the problem of adult innumercay because a lot of people have been trying very hard for a very long time to solve this problem, with no discernible progress, and you seem, not ignorant of this history, but indifferent to it. I am persuaded, given the long history of this effort, that if there were a method for teaching math to adults, it would have been found, already. Whatever is going on with adult innumeracy, another textbook cannot be the answer.
Perhaps the mistake you are making is this. You assert that math is taught in a dry, stultifying manner that sucks the life out of what should be a vibrant subject. However, you think this is how math education began. Not so. Once upon a time, mathematics was a very small community of people who were motivated to learn and advance the subject and mathematics was taught in a natural way.
Only as the number of people learning mathematics grew, did the style of instruction change. It is the very mathiness of mathematics that most people object to, and to make math more tolerable for them, it was gradually transformed into what we have today. Of course, the community of people who actually like mathematics and want to learn the subject and advance it remains small today, as ever.
Now, you and Schremmer want to turn the clock back more than a century and inject the mathiness back into mathematics, and you want to do it for the masses. Good luck with that.
Haim
We're buying shrimp, guys.
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