Joerg, Yes Indeed. By contrast millions of people voluntarily (and with relish) spend hours each week doing Sudoku's. We would see this as being an example of mathematical reasoning. Invariably when I meet someone who's not in a scientific field, and I tell them that I'm a mathematician, I see a look of panic in their face, and I hear "Math was my worst subject". It's clear that the experience of being taught mathematics is traumatic for most people. It would be better if we structured mathematics as a general problem solving experience -- for example look at the introduction of Polya's "How to solve it". The general public needs to learn logic and reasoning skills. Historically almost all mathematical skills have evolved as part of *natural sciences* -- necessary skills that one needs to use in the context of general problem solving. Most word problems in algebra and calculus are worse than stupid. An imperfect analogy is physical education. At least when I was in school (and I hope that things have gotten better) -- we spent most of the time doing calisthenics (which nobody really liked -- but we were assured were necessary. Most math skills are taught like that). The rest of the time was spent in *real* physical activities -- like playing various sports -- which would be enjoyable, but only after acquiring a certain level of skill. But the real problem that I saw here, is that the instructors (who were invariably ex star athletes themselves, or in my case in high school an ex-Marine drill sargeant) catered toward the students who were already skilled in the sports, and never tried to motivate or help the others (sound familiar). Victor On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Joerg Arndt <arndt@jjj.de> wrote:
Did really none of the replies mention FUN?
Math eduction (school level) suffers brutally from the style of teaching that implicitly suggests that nothing could be farther away from math than fun.
People are horrified by math because in school they learned that it is something utterly dreadful.
Huge surprise they are neither very good at it nor much inclined to learn more?
Big fail for the teachers, they _are_ to blame.
This is from my (German) perspective where teachers do have a decent salary and working conditions. If you have to mention politics make sure it's similar for the place you are referring to (regarding cash, conditions, and perspective) before anything else.
Cheers, jj, now a teacher (post school, students of engineering)
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