

It's Not Just Writing: Math Needs a Revolution, Too - tokenadult
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/its-not-just-writing-math-needs-a-revolution-too/263545/

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ek
It is extremely true that mathematics curricula for schoolchildren in general
require reform, and most mathematicians will agree on this point. The problem
with previous attempts is that they have been designed by people who do not
fully understand mathematics and executed by the same. The by now infamous
example of the "New Math" was satirized by popular culture because _everyone_
seemed to miss the point. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math>

While pieces like the well-circulated "A Mathematician's Lament" (PDF:
<http://www.maa.org/devlin/lockhartslament.pdf>) by Paul Lockhart argue that
the mathematics taught to schoolchildren ought to resemble "real math", the
sort of math that mathematicians think of as math (with theorems and proofs
and much less of an emphasis on computation), they neglect the unfortunate
reality that compulsory childhood education still exists largely towards a
pragmatic end. Children must be able to compare prices at the grocery store
and be able to reason about quantities.

Hung-Hsi Wu has done a great deal of work into how to fix the mathematics
curricula of today. This is in contrast to the revolutionary approach that we
have tried and failed at. His work focuses largely on fixing specific
weaknesses in the core standards and fixing the _way_ mathematics is taught,
rather than what is actually being taught, in many cases.
<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/>

In addition, Pólya's _How To Solve It_ is the sort of text that teachers
should read and become familiar with, in order to better understand how to
teach problem solving, which is much of what mathematics at the grade school
level is - instruction in problem solving. In fact, I would recommend it to
every HN member - it's a wonderful little book about the art of solving
problems, mathematical or otherwise.
<http://press.princeton.edu/titles/669.html>

