Haim
Posts:
7,807
Registered:
12/6/04
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Re: Keeping it Pure = Keeping it Meaningless?
Posted:
Aug 25, 2011 11:27 PM
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Note: I do not understand why I have been censored since everything I write in this note I have written before, usually right to their faces. So, here is my 3rd attempt, expurgating what I guess are the mysteriously offensive passages.
Dave L. Renfro Posted: Aug 24, 2011 12:01 PM
>The point of my previous post is that to do justice to
>one of these non-traditional applications (or any
>applications, for that matter) it often takes a fair
>amount of knowledge about the subject if you want to
>avoid doing something that experts in that subject would
>find trivial or just plain incorrect, and it seems it's
>been left up to the math teachers and textbook writers
>to do this, not the people involved in these other areas
>who supposedly have an interest in these applications
>being put forth in algebra and precalculus classes.
Dave,
You raise a couple of very interesting points. First, I do not agree that applications have been "left up" to the math teachers and textbook writers. As I argued in my previous note, there is an usurpation happening.
Second, to argue whether or not it is a good idea for math teachers to teach outside their field of expertise is to assume they can do it. I humbly suggest there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
<examples deleted>
Aside from mathematics, we have the famous modern case of Fleischmann and Pons, two otherwise well regarded chemists who made fools of themselves when they dabbled in physics. In their book, "Higher Superstition", Gross and Levitt document how arts faculties make fools of themselves dabbling in the sciences.
If somebody were to make of study of this, I would bet he could produce a long list of people straying outside their fields of expertise and making complete fools of themselves. In general, I would say it is a very bad idea indeed, to have people teach outside their fields of expertise.
And so, we return to the same basic question. If it is so obvious that having people teach outside their fields of expertise is a bad idea, and I think this little fact is transparent to any open-minded person, why do the Education Mafia persist in this plan? I think it is because the teaching of mathematics, or any real academic subject, is the furthest thing from their minds.
Haim
Shovel ready? What shovel ready?
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