
Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math - p4bl0
http://www.computerbasedmath.org/resources/reforming-math-curriculum-with-computers.html
======
vph
Of course, his main point is to advocate for using computers to teach and
learn math; he's selling Mathematica/Wolfram Alpha.

But this is dangerous and a little shallow. And here is why.

Math is the language of science; just like a C -- or any other programming
language -- is a language of computing; just like English is a language of
humans.

There are many ways to learn a language, but I think they all have something
in common. You have to spend a lot of time learning, reading and _writing_.
The _writing_ is quite important. You have to write the language to be good at
it.

The thing about math is that currently to write as it is supposed to look like
can only be done most conveniently on paper. Writing a math formula in
Mathematica or Wolfram alpha requires a latex-like mini language, another
thing to learn, and can be disrupting.

This fact alone means that computers can only supplement; and they can be an
excellent supplement. But it can not replace doing math by hands, on papers,
particularly for those who are learning this new language.

~~~
babarock
I do not disagree with you, but this is not answering his arguments.

 _Math is the language of science[...]. There are many ways to learn a
language, but I think they all have something in common. You have to spend a
lot of time learning, reading and writing. The writing is quite important. You
have to write the language to be good at it._

He's not arguing that scientists should drop _writing_ math altogether
(although you have to admit that they _are_ spending huge amount of efforts
making the computers do the calculation for them). He's addressing the more
general issue of "teaching math in elementary schools". Why do we do it today?
not everyone is going to be a scientist!

 _The thing about math is that currently to write as it is supposed to look
like can only be done most conveniently on paper. Writing a math formula in
Mathematica or Wolfram alpha requires a latex-like mini language[...]._

Yeah writing math formulas on a computer is a pain. But:

\- you and I come from a generation of pen and paper math solving. The idea of
markup annotation of your text is still very young, but is it so far fetched
to imagine that in few generations, all text will be filled with metadata and
tags? LaTeX is a pain because of our current primitive keyboards and screens.

\- more people should work towards improving this. Wolfram Alpha is doing good
things, they're not the only ones working on this either, but we still need to
bring more attention to the issue.

Also, who cares if he sells WA. Let's talk about his idea, not his persona.

~~~
rimantas

      > but is it so far fetched to imagine that in few
      > generations, all text will be filled with metadata
      > and tags?
    

Yes, I think it is.

------
slowpoke
I think he argues from the wrong point. Yes, we need to teach math, not
calculating. No, the argument is not "because we can do calculating with
computers today". Lockhart got it right in his famous lament - the problem is
that we face a system of self-sustaining bullshit that actually _thinks_ it's
teaching math.

My guess is that Conrad Wolfram probably plans to conveniently also sell the
accompanying software for this new education, which would make it natural for
him to focus on this point. I actually agree that computers can help us
educate people better, and that we need to create appropriate software for
this. But my concern would then be that such software _must_ be free/libre. No
compromise. We cannot risk the education of future generations to be locked
into $corporation's proprietary products.

~~~
ljd
I recently had the experience of helping a young algebra student with her
homework. She is very bright and is in an accelerated math program that
teaches algebra in the 7th grade.

However, it was so disappointing to see the curriculum. I was in the same
accelerated program 15 years ago and the curriculum hadn't changed a bit. It
was still vague and unhelpful. They sent her home for the summer with a large
packet of problems to solve without any explanation how to solve them.

I majored in math and I still had to guess at what the worksheets were asking
the student to do. They used vague variables and were essentially just
teaching rote memorization. It reminded me of my own confusion in mathematics
when I was growing up, how one year a variable would mean one thing and the
next year it would mean something else. "Solve and explain," means just as
little to me now, using math on a daily basis, as it did to the 11 year old
version of me.

After so many years, it would have been nice to see the curriculum focus more
on application of mathematics and less on how to memorize and calculate.

~~~
biot

      > how one year a variable would mean one thing and the next
      > year it would mean something else
    

I'm probably misunderstanding what you mean, but isn't that the purpose of a
variable? In programming, a variable _foo_ in one method which represents
Widget objects is completely independent from a variable _foo_ in another
method which represents Gadget objects. In math, solving for X in one problem
might be to find the missing angle X, but in another problem it might be to
determine the elapsed seconds X.

~~~
ljd
I'm not disagreeing that variables are meant to be variable.

However, it's important to teach context behind variables before asking an 11
year old to solve them or else it becomes a point of confusion. They are asked
to use rote memorization to complete the calculations but they don't seed
their memory before asking.

------
RyanMcGreal
In high school physics about 22 years ago, we did an experiment to calculate
the acceleration due to gravity by repeatedly dropping a weight with a ticker
tape attached to it that fed through a hole punch tool and measuring the
spacing of the holes in the tape over time. As part of the analysis and write-
up, we had to calculate the standard deviation across our sample runs. That
seemed really tedious to me, so I wrote a program in BASIC that took a data
file, ran the calculations and saved the results. I recall a certain to-do as
the school deliberated over whether this was an acceptable way to complete the
assignment, and I was asked to include the source code for my program so the
teacher could determine that I understood the concept well enough to program
it.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
I think it would be cool if calculators weren't allowed in school unless you
programmed them yourself. Now trying to enforce that might be difficult but it
is an interesting idea.

------
hybridthesis
I noticed a few of articles on Hacker News has been about math recently.
According to Google Trends, math is also rising in popularity, especially in
US.

I think math is even more appealing to programmers. You are allowed to assume
that certain things happen. You may define a set on the fly and all of a
sudden, the set is populated without pressing a single key. Let me try, {prime
numbers}. There, I got an infinitely large data structure. I hope HN doesn't
crash after posting this comment.

As programmers, we put abstract ideas into implementations. Math seems to
forgo all of that. Everything just happens magically as long as your mind can
wrap around it and you have a precise definition for it. No debugging. Isn't
this a dream?

So I am wondering if there's a community of programmers who have turned to
devote their time to math. Like the video said, computer frees you from
computation. Hence, it makes sense for math's popularity to rise, especially
since we got more people interested in programming. Math seems like the
natural next step. I don't have any hard data about this, just my intuition.

------
brr
"And, of course, as we all know, with a computer you can take a simple problem
like solve 5x2+2x+1=7 but you can make it harder, for example solve
5x4+2x+1=7. The principle of the problem is still the same."

This is not, in fact, true for polynomial equations of order greater than
four. From Wikipedia, "the Abel–Ruffini theorem states that there is no
general algebraic solution... to polynomial equations of degree five or
higher." This is often featured as one of the main results in an undergraduate
abstract algebra course.

I'm all for automating calculations, but the algorithms behind calculations
and their proofs are important and often fascinating. Handing students an
implementation of such algorithms, e.g. Mathematica, takes away their
opportunity to code up the algorithms and understand them deeply.

Edit: Wording

~~~
csense
For that matter, asking students at the high school level to derive the
quadratic formula will likely be quite challenging for even the best students
in the class.

Asking students to come up with the formulas for 3rd or 4th degree polynomials
on their own is probably going to be beyond anyone below the very top tier of
human capability. A teacher would be extremely lucky to see one or two
students that can do this in their career.

Then again, most people could easily solve these problems if they know what
terms to Google :)

Anyway, as I recall the third- and fourth-degree cases require clever
substitutions (whereas the derivation of QF is just completing the square with
general coefficients).

------
felipellrocha
On one end you will hear people equate math to calculating, this is almost
exclusively how math is taught in school today, and on the other, people like
to talk about math ideas, and how we shouldn't really teach people how to
calculate anymore since we got computers for that. Like in many aspects of
life, learning math is about balance.

In truth, people should learn from both areas simultaneously, since they are
mutually connected. Calculating is a tool that makes you a better problem
solver, and being a problem solver will allow you to find new tools to
calculate faster. You can't separate either discipline from one another.

In my view, I think students should take one calculation, and one deeper math
class a year starting in high school. That wat they could delve deeper in
learning how to calculate (learning different methods for multiplication that
might come in handy when doing mental math, for example), and start dealing
with real, thought-heavy math from an earlier grade (learning about
combinatorics, graph, game, and probability theory early in high school, etc).

~~~
wtetzner
I would say, stop concentrating on calculation, and teach math. However,
calculation is often a useful way to ensure you understand something. So,
calculation will likely still be a part of learning math, but it shouldn't be
the focus.

------
drewrv
It's sad how many people think that math is arithmetic, and that if we let
kids use computers or calculators then they're not "doing math". Not just the
general public but PTA leaders, school board members, and school
administrators.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I live in a relatively wealthy school district in Ohio where the schools
generally are well-regarded. Last year, I went to the schools "parents math
night". I had expected to be exasperated by, you know, those idiots who will
be teaching my children (my older son is entering first grade this fall).
However, I ended up impressed with the teachers and disappointed by the
parents in attendance. The school had chosen the "Connected Math" curricula
(connectedmath.msu.edu) for its middle school math program, and some parents
were outraged that Little Johnny wasn't learning long division (or whatever).
Their arguments could be summed up as, "Well, that's not the way we learned
it." I angered the other parents by playing a bit dumb and asking for a short
description of the curriculum. Then, I stated loudly that it "sounded
delightful." The teachers barely contain their smiles. I ordered a couple of
the books in used form from Amazon to see for myself, and I think I would have
found the exercises fun as a middle schooler. I really wanted to ask the
parents doing the complaining, "Don't you love your children? You pay more for
a house just because it's in this school district, and then you lobby to dumb-
down the math curriculum?"

------
p4bl0
I remember reading an article about almost the same topic by Felleisen, maybe
Flatt, maybe Culpepper and some others from the PLT group, it was about using
DrRacket to teach maths, there was an example involving the take-off of a
rocket iirc. Is anyone able to find it? I don't remember the title nor where
it was published.

~~~
fscof
I really like the idea of teaching math in tandem with elementary programming.
It demystifies writing code and can be very helpful in teaching important math
concepts like functions, variables and graphing. At the very least, exposure
to programming at an early age will get more kids interested in the subject.

Does anyone know of good examples of schools that are already doing this with
something like Dr Racket?

~~~
takikawa
I think you'd be interested in Bootstrap World, which is basically what you
described: <http://www.bootstrapworld.org/>

------
ajuc
I remember to this day the lesson in primary school, when we first started
solving word problems. It was sth like 3rd class. Teacher would ask simple
question, like "how many apples we had to add to each chest, if there is 4
chests with 7 apples in each, and we need to have total of 32 apples". And
kids had to "brainstorm" and translate that into mathemathic process and solve
(not algebra, just "first we need to know how many apples we lack, so we
substract, then we need to know how many apples per chest we lack, so we
divide", we didn't knew algebra yet). If the question wasn't specific, the kid
that pointed it out got praise for being observant, and teacher specified what
he meant. Most kids liked that lesson, and there was fierce competition to be
the first to guess. That was the moment I felt in love with math, before that
I thought I'm more of a humanist (which meant it's OK I can't understand
decimal fractions ;) ).

I think teaching kids to translate problem into math is very important, not
only for math, but also if they want to be economists, computer programmers,
etc. I cringe when I read that kids "know math, but don't know which equation
to use to solve the problem". My wife taught math in secondary school for a
while (in Poland, not USA, but we've recently had reform modeling our schools
on those in "the West"). Many kids she taught had no idea how to translate
word problem into math problem. They just pattern-matched keywords to
equations. It's very sad, and I understand why they hate math - it must be
completely frustrating to play this "guess the equation" game.

So - I think there should be more focus on teaching kids to understand the
basic word problems, before they even know algebra. To be sure, that they
understand when we need to substract x, and when we need to substract from x.

------
ivan_ah
So basically what he is saying is that drilling kids into memorizing math
procedures like LONG DIVISION is not a good way to get people interested in
math and analytical thinking in general. Ok. Sure. He is right that modelling
is probably what "people who don't get math" struggle the most with.

But saying that math is just "computational stuff, turn the crank, let the
computer do it" kind of thing is ludicrous. You can use mathematics as a
blackbox model to do cool demos and stuff, but at some point you //have// to
open the box and see how it is done.

It just happens that the standard math curriculum (numbers, functions, sin,
cos, etc.) is a very good mix of conceptual complexity and computational
complexity that can all be understood with pen and paper. You won't need to
trust anyone, the proof is right there on the sheet. Anyone trying to take
that understand in order to replace with with a SolveEquation[.] is not on the
right side of intellectualism. Demos yes, but view source (is there view
source for Mathematica functions?) and explain source are //sine qua non// for
deep knowledge.

------
magice
This is sad. Really sad. My personal opinion is that Americans just dislike
academic matters so much that they are incapable of forming a coherent
solution for their children's schooling.

Let me tell you some personal anecdotes. I moved to Minnesota during my High
school senior year from Vietnam. It sucked: I couldn't hold on to
conversations, and people couldn't understand my pronunciation; so I was bored
and very lonely. You know what I do during my lunch time? Trying to re-prove
Fermat's Last Theorem. Is there any "real world" application of that? Well,
there may be, but I don't care. It was fun.

You know how people listen to (and rock to) puke music on buses? I rode bus a
lot during my college years, and spent that time wreaking my brain to work on
various NP complete problems (my favorite is the man-woman-dog matching :D).
Do I know it is beyond my capacity? Yes. Do I care about any real world
problem of it? No. Why did I do it then? It's fun. It killed time. I still do
this from time to time during meetings at work.

When you think about it, most of math, or most of the academia for that
matter, is not readily applicable. True, people use calculus to build Hoover
Dam, but the effect of that information on whether or not a student likes math
is equivalent of a political speech to a person political orientation: either
you already like it (math/Obama) and cheer for it, or you already hate it
(math/Obama) and boo/ignore it. These things, by itself, can't change a
person's opinion regarding the big picture.

You know why I like doing math in my free time? Because I have done a whole
load of it. Vietnamese High School graduates are required to learn around
sophomore math level in American college (and I fully expect most other East
Asian systems to be the same). This explains neatly why Asian students are
"smart." They freaking know the things already. Furthermore, the learning of
math there involved an absurd amount of drill (compared to American high
schools). Oh, calculators are banned until high school, and graphing
calculators are banned. Period.

Now, should that not make me abhor math? I mean, slaving myself so much time
over such stupid and abstract matter must bore me to death, right? Actually,
the opposite happened. It's like taste bud. You rebuild your taste bud every
so often, so if you have been eating a whole load of broccoli lately, you will
start to like broccoli. Yeah, after the first few days, you can't even digest
to crap. However, after a few months, you can't digest without broccoli.
Humans are adaptable. Do a lot of math, and you will like it.

This also speaks of the problem with calculators and computers. The problem is
no so much that they dump down math. The problem is that they alienate the
students from math. When you do math, all of it, the result is made of your
sweat. It may be wrong, but it's yours. It may be stupid and winded and long
and whatnots, but it's yours. It's personal. I remember once, during 5th grade
(yes, elementary school), there was this problem that I just could not solve,
and we were kicked out of class for lunch break. Walking out, I cling to the
teacher and cried out of frustration. The same frustration that keeps me up at
nights when some stupid bugs could not be fixed. Must be the same frustration
that all artisans experience at challenges. It's the indication of the bond
that I have with my work, MY math, and it necessitates the toil, the slaving,
the mind-numbing work of calculation.

I hope you see my point: there is no elevator to interest in math. Math lovers
must have toiled and slaved over stupid calculation over and over, until a
point that they could actually produce the trace of math working, just like
the zone in programming or any other art. That trace, that focus, that
absorption builds the love for math.

Of course, this means that the students must fist cross the initial barrier of
math, just like the first few days of broccoli eating. In Asian cultures,
academia is a point of pride. Parents take enormous pride in their children's
academia success. Schools take enormous pride in their students' academia
achievements. Think about football in American high schools. It's something
similar. Study well, perform well in competition, and a student will enjoy
numerous privileges and honors that is just unattainable through any other
mean. The whole culture rates academia above any other activities, and use
that as the measure for potential success. Playing sport well will earn
praise, but it is understood to be temporary, fast passing. Studying well, and
people will talk about how you will got to such and such colleges, and will
become such and such person in the future. It's just different.

Back to problem of American math schooling. Here is my prescription: just make
the damn students do it. Require them to work on math. Forget about the whole,
um, personality and uniqueness and whatnots. You know where these things are
from? The toil of work (for students, that's studying) builds personality,
values, and one's importance and uniqueness. You know where self esteem is
from? It's from holding a piece of paper on which a problem has been solved
and solution has been neatly presented; it's from the overcoming of
frustration and challenges that the problem presents. Artisans take pride and
esteem in their works. Students take pride and esteem in their tests and
homework (except when you tell them that the football players will get the
praise, the money, and the sex, and only these 3 things matter). Stop worrying
about overworking them. Actually, overwork them to the ground. Leave them no
energy and time to experiment with drugs and sex and alcohol.

It takes challenges and toil to make a person. Stop taking these things away
from the youngsters!

~~~
kiba
_Back to problem of American math schooling. Here is my prescription: just
make the damn students do it. Require them to work on math. Forget about the
whole, um, personality and uniqueness and whatnots. You know where these
things are from? The toil of work (for students, that's studying) builds
personality, values, and one's importance and uniqueness. You know where self
esteem is from? It's from holding a piece of paper on which a problem has been
solved and solution has been neatly presented; it's from the overcoming of
frustration and challenges that the problem presents. Artisans take pride and
esteem in their works. Students take pride and esteem in their tests and
homework (except when you tell them that the football players will get the
praise, the money, and the sex, and only these 3 things matter). Stop worrying
about overworking them. Actually, overwork them to the ground. Leave them no
energy and time to experiment with drugs and sex and alcohol._

Um, no, this has nothing to do with hard work, and everything to do with the
way mathematic is taught. I am a programmer and I would love to understand
mathematics the way I understand programming. There got to be far more to
mathematics than simply learning how to follow steps.

As a programmer, I write, debug, fix and improve code. With math, I don't
understand why am I merely following steps when computers can do it at far
higher reliability than I could.

~~~
dkarl
_There got to be far more to mathematics than simply learning how to follow
steps._

Nope, that's really all there is. Just like computer programming is nothing
but learning to string arcane commands together in anal retentive ways. It's
just a lot of making variable names and putting data in them and using little
symbols like "argc" and "foldl" and "fopen" that have excruciatingly dry
definitions that are completely disconnected from the real world. You memorize
rules of syntax and look up function definitions and follow all of the rules
exactly correctly, and even after you've done what feels like a _ton_ of that
you're still just writing a dumb program that you would never use anyway.
What's the point?

But I bet you didn't feel that way about programming when you were first
learning, right? Things like foldl and dlopen seemed kind of neat, if not
mind-blowing. People who become good at programming get there because they
take delight in the simple things that make up the basics. Is there anything
intrinsically beautiful about loops? There is the first time you encounter
one. Oh, man, the possibilities! The feeling passes quickly, but I can't
imagine how anyone who never enjoyed loops could endure the boredom long
enough to become skilled at programming.

It's the same thing with math. Like programming, it really _is_ just symbol
manipulation and nothing more. The pleasure and beauty is in your perception
of it, the concepts you develop to give intuitive substance to the abstract
rules. Your appreciation gets deeper the more you learn. But to get there you
have to enjoy the basics, the simple things. How many times did you have to
write

    
    
      for (i = 0; i < m; ++i)
    

before it became second nature? You must have derived some satisfaction from
your initial fumbling with loops and functions or your interest would have
died before you learned to write more complex programs. (The kids who don't
enjoy the basics quit programming as soon as they realize they won't be making
a state-of-the-art video game in a weekend.) Learning math is the same
process; you start by enjoying where you are, even if you're starting at the
mathematical equivalent of

    
    
      for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
        System.out.println("I love cake " + i + " times!");
      }
    

That may not sound very attractive to an educated person with many
sophisticated things to think about. It's entirely possible that there are
some people who are not simple-minded enough to enjoy math. However, I think
those people do not enjoy programming, either ;-)

~~~
beambot
_Like programming, it really is just symbol manipulation and nothing more._ I
strongly disagree. Arithmetic, perhaps... but not "math."

Some of the best math proofs require little-to-no direct symbol manipulation.
You might be able to reduce a mathematical statement down to the symbolic
level (eg. using sets), but so much of the beauty is in the simple intuition.
One simple example: the pigeon hole principle -- you can teach it to a 3 year
old, and yet its incredibly powerful.

EDIT: If you read about Lockhart's Lament (as mentioned elsewhere in this
thread), he specifically writes:

The cultural problem is a self-perpetuating monster: students learn about math
from their teachers, and teachers learn about it from their teachers, so this
lack of understanding and appreciation for mathematics in our culture
replicates itself indefinitely. _Worse, the perpetuation of this “pseudo-
mathematics,” this emphasis on the accurate yet mindless manipulation of
symbols, creates its own culture and its own set of values._ Those who have
become adept at it derive a great deal of self-esteem from their success. The
last thing they want to hear is that math is really about raw creativity and
aesthetic sensitivity. Many a graduate student has come to grief when they
discover, after a decade of being told they were “good at math,” that in fact
they have no real mathematical talent and are just very good at following
directions. Math is not about following directions, it’s about making new
directions.

~~~
dkarl
Be fair. I do get around to saying there's more to it. Why, it's in the very
next sentence after the one you quoted :-)

 _The pleasure and beauty is in your perception of it, the concepts you
develop to give intuitive substance to the abstract rules._

~~~
akjetma
That seems to imply that the pleasure and beauty of mathematics is in the way
one perceives symbolic manipulation. I actually think the pleasure and beauty
of mathematics is in the stage before one gets to manipulating symbols; the
stage where you have an idea about something and are thinking about ways to
communicate it or prove it. People should be given problems ('how much of this
box does this triangle take up?' to paraphrase Lockhart's example) and allowed
to drum up their own solutions/syntax.

Admittedly, this is kind of idealistic.

------
dinkumthinkum
I didn't really see much specific stuff here, to be honest. There was some
program that you could use sliders to figure the best life insurance policy
... I mean, ok ... that's great ... What's the big deal again?

What are some specific examples. There's all this "wah schools only teach
calculation." Well, what specifically are they teaching that is bad and what
specifically should they teach that is better?

So, are we saying, no reason for a student to know how to take a derivative,
they should know how to turn the knobs on some program to figure out the best
fuel efficiency of some device in some really neat simulator?

The example about limits ... ok yeah that's cool but if you aren't actually
teach them how to "calculate" (is the word "calculate" used as a boogey man?),
how is that you are not doing anything other than teaching "math
appreciation?"

------
Shank
Though it isn't worth much, I'd like to put my two cents in as a student
currently going through high school.

In the district in which I'm partaking in public education, there's a dead
even split between contemporary and traditional math courses. Our school
offers both the Core-Plus Mathematics Project (<http://wmich.edu/cpmp/>) and
some variation of what I'd consider traditional (Geometry 1, 2, Algebra 1, 2,
etc.).

The students more often than not will prefer the Core-Plus Mathematics Project
over the traditional courses early on in their education - but once the math
switches over to a primarily calculating class (take, for instance, Calculus),
the opinions shift and favor the other one.

What we honestly have in my district is a case of a system that's trying to
split itself down the middle politically - as we're attempting to switch to a
modern, context driven approach to mathematics, whilst maintaining the link to
processes like Advanced Placement, which only judge on the traditional aspects
([http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_calab.htm...](http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_calab.html)).

While it might be a better route for the future, the present is demanding math
to be calculation based for the near future. It'll only start switching into a
better realm when colleges and pre-college programs like those offered by
CollegeBoard make the switch to context-based systems, rather than calculation
based ones.

(I'm very well aware of how rambling that is, sorry!)

------
csense
Mathematicians are basically just accountants, right? And the IRS has
gazillions of accountants who only really work during tax season...so, if our
math programs suck, let's move our tax due date to overlap with schools'
summer break, fire all the math teachers and replace them with those IRS guys!

It might be better than the existing system and it could hardly be worse.
There's already been some work done on a curriculum (warning: PDF link):
<http://www.cs.amherst.edu/~djv/irs.pdf>

------
dspeyer
These how-to-apply-math skills are valuable, but they aren't math itself. Math
is about building more general abstractions, keeping strict rigor, being
careful with axioms, and developing techniques that are really, really broad
as a result.

Granted, calculation isn't a very good way to get into this either.

------
uncoder0
Added to the reading list. I've been saying this for quite a while. I think we
were able to capture this in our 9th grade math games we have been working on.

------
kzahel
Enjoyed skimming your article. If only more geeks actually wanted to teach
kids... unfortunately most of us will only be able to do that once we've
retired!

~~~
ZoFreX
If I went back into education for 2 more years, piled more student debt on top
of myself, not to mention living like a student again, PLUS having to have a
part-time job while studying (while the loan is bigger for a PGCE, the costs
of living are much much higher), and then got a job as a teacher, worked my
ass off for 10 years, I would, if I was lucky, be earning the same salary I am
today, a couple of years after leaving university.

Sounds like a great fucking deal to me.

~~~
alexqgb
This cannot be upvoted hard enough. Education would reform itself overnight if
teachers were hired from the top third of high school classes, not the bottom
two thirds, and paid salaries that started ~$70k and reached ~$100k in five
years if they were good.

Students struggle because you have to be a saint or an idiot to teach under
the conditions currently imposed. We don't have nearly enough of the former,
and way too many of the latter.

I have a really hard time imagining that brain-dead curriculum boards and
mediocre administrators would sustain their death grip on a profession
suddenly flooded with really sharp, well paid, professionals.

~~~
aggronn
Imagine the change in classroom atmosphere if teachers had the same social
credibility as professors did (or more aptly, if high school teachers had the
same respect and admiration from students as kindergarten teachers)

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scoith
His talk is fundamentally wrong. Turning real life problems into a
mathematical form (in other words, modelling) is not a subject of mathematics.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
To be fair, I disagree with his position, but he is willing to call it
something else, but the end of the day it is to teach his proposal as opposed
what we now teach.

~~~
scoith
Using computers. And with computers, he means Mathematica.

------
scoith
He's basically trying to sell Mathematica.

