One of my favorite H.S. teachers taught me both AP math & AP chemistry. He was tough, but always had a twinkle in his eye. Once, after a good rain, he took us all out onto the football field & threw a bunch of metallic sodium into a puddle so we could watch it explode. Today, that stunt would have landed him in Guantanamo ! He had memorized the entire 2-decimal-digit times and quotient tables, so he didn't have to use a slide rule very often. At 09:01 AM 10/22/2014, Dan Asimov wrote:
FYI -- I would not agree with most of this article.
This is just "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" recycled without due credit.
Maybe once we've duplicated randomized double-blind controlled experiments, I might agree.
The author never even considers the possibility that different kinds of kids do best with different kinds of teaching. The research cited is very easily refuted for the general case. (E.g.:
* True expertise requiring about 10,000 hours of practice is for top experts in their fields, not your typical schoolkid.
* Rote learning may be why some kids are top scorers in the National Spelling Bee, but what good is that in today's world?
* The strictest teachers may be the ones whose kids have the best test scores in L.A.'s worst schools, but what about in average schools? And fwiw I've learned the most from the teachers I've liked as people.
* Maybe creativity can be learned, but certainly traditional education stifles a great deal of it.
* Grit trumps talent? They both sound like useful traits to me.
* Praise makes you weak? Maybe undue praise does, but not earned praise.
But I do agree here:
* Failure is an option.
* Yes, a moderate amount of stress is important.
* Up to a point, strict is better than nice. (But the two are compatible.)
I suspect that negative feedback just in the way of bad grades is why so many kids hate school and lose interest in learning. I advocate the "merit badge" approach to education, where positive feedback is emphasized for what kids *do* learn.
I most certainly do *not* agree with the treacly approach to education, where every answer no matter how wrong is given positive feedback.
--Dan
On Oct 22, 2014, at 8:00 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
FYI -- I suspect that many on this list would agree with these conclusions w.r.t. math education.