Comment Logic and Necessity. (Score 1) 1153
They problem with math education is that it is taught in a sort of vacuum. Students don't see the necessity of math until much later in their lives when it's too late. People try all sorts of methods to teach math, but what we really need to teach, I feel, is the necessity of math. We need to wow students young to show them that math can be useful.
That said I think that we should introduce logic and geometry at younger ages and geometry needs to play a more natural role than doing those retarded column proofs that scar 10th graders so much. Math was invented to help explain the world around us, to help keep count of that which is important to us, but it has been divorced from that in education. Sure we have those asinine word problems, but again these problems rarely connect with their target audience.
If you look at higher math so much of it has very deep connections to geometric structure as well as critical logic skills. So it makes no sense to me that these ideas are taught in compartmentalized nature and that all the areas of math are so segregated. Plus Logic and critical thinking are skills that cross all areas of life.
In conclusion, we need to be showing children how and why math is important, not just trying to beat the rules of arithmetic and fractions into their aching and confused brains.
That said I think that we should introduce logic and geometry at younger ages and geometry needs to play a more natural role than doing those retarded column proofs that scar 10th graders so much. Math was invented to help explain the world around us, to help keep count of that which is important to us, but it has been divorced from that in education. Sure we have those asinine word problems, but again these problems rarely connect with their target audience.
If you look at higher math so much of it has very deep connections to geometric structure as well as critical logic skills. So it makes no sense to me that these ideas are taught in compartmentalized nature and that all the areas of math are so segregated. Plus Logic and critical thinking are skills that cross all areas of life.
In conclusion, we need to be showing children how and why math is important, not just trying to beat the rules of arithmetic and fractions into their aching and confused brains.