By Joseph Ganem
How can students who have studied college level math for years need remedial math when they finally arrive at college? From my knowledge of both curricula I see three problems.
1. Confusing difficulty with rigor. It appears to me that the creators of the grade school math curricula believe that “rigor” means pushing students to do ever more difficult problems at a younger age. It’s like teaching difficult concerti to novice musicians before they master the basics of their instruments. Rigor–defined by the dictionary in the context of mathematics as a “scrupulous or inflexible accuracy”–is best obtained by learning age-appropriate concepts and techniques. Attempting difficult problems without the proper foundation is actually an impediment to developing rigor.
Rigor is critical to math and science because it allows practitioners to navigate novel problems and still arrive at a correct answer. But if the novel problems are so difficult that a higher authority must always be consulted, rigorous thinking will never develop. The student will see mathematical reasoning as a mysterious process that only experts with advanced degrees consulting books filled with incomprehensible hieroglyphics can fathom. Students need to be challenged but in such a way that they learn independent thinking. Pushing problems that are always beyond their ability to comprehend teaches dependence–the opposite of what is needed to develop rigor.
2. Mistaking process for understanding. Just because a student can perform a technique that solves a difficult problem doesn’t mean that he or she understands the problem. There is a delightful story recounted by Richard Feynman in his book: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character, that recounts an arithmetic competition between him and an abacus salesman. (The incident happened in the 1950’s before the invention of calculators.)
The salesman came into a bar and wanted to demonstrate the superiority of his device to the proprietors through a timed competition on various kinds of arithmetic problems. Feynman was asked to do the pencil and paper arithmetic so that the salesman could demonstrate that his method was much faster. Feynman lost when the problems were simple addition. But he was very competitive at multiplication and won easily at the apparently impossible task of finding a cubed root. The salesman was totally bewildered by the outcome and left completely discouraged. How could Feynman have a comparative advantage at hard problems when he lagged far behind at the easy ones?
1. Confusing difficulty with rigor. It appears to me that the creators of the grade school math curricula believe that “rigor” means pushing students to do ever more difficult problems at a younger age. It’s like teaching difficult concerti to novice musicians before they master the basics of their instruments. Rigor–defined by the dictionary in the context of mathematics as a “scrupulous or inflexible accuracy”–is best obtained by learning age-appropriate concepts and techniques. Attempting difficult problems without the proper foundation is actually an impediment to developing rigor.
Rigor is critical to math and science because it allows practitioners to navigate novel problems and still arrive at a correct answer. But if the novel problems are so difficult that a higher authority must always be consulted, rigorous thinking will never develop. The student will see mathematical reasoning as a mysterious process that only experts with advanced degrees consulting books filled with incomprehensible hieroglyphics can fathom. Students need to be challenged but in such a way that they learn independent thinking. Pushing problems that are always beyond their ability to comprehend teaches dependence–the opposite of what is needed to develop rigor.
2. Mistaking process for understanding. Just because a student can perform a technique that solves a difficult problem doesn’t mean that he or she understands the problem. There is a delightful story recounted by Richard Feynman in his book: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character, that recounts an arithmetic competition between him and an abacus salesman. (The incident happened in the 1950’s before the invention of calculators.)
The salesman came into a bar and wanted to demonstrate the superiority of his device to the proprietors through a timed competition on various kinds of arithmetic problems. Feynman was asked to do the pencil and paper arithmetic so that the salesman could demonstrate that his method was much faster. Feynman lost when the problems were simple addition. But he was very competitive at multiplication and won easily at the apparently impossible task of finding a cubed root. The salesman was totally bewildered by the outcome and left completely discouraged. How could Feynman have a comparative advantage at hard problems when he lagged far behind at the easy ones?
Months later the salesman met Feynman at a different bar and asked him how he could do the cubed root so quickly. But when Feynman tried to explain his reasoning he discovered the salesman had no understanding of arithmetic. All he did was move beads on an abacus. It was not possible for Feynman to teach the salesman additional mathematics because despite appearances he understood absolutely nothing. The salesman left even more discouraged than before.
This is the problem with teaching eighth-graders techniques such as matrix inversion. The arithmetic steps can be memorized but it will be a long time, if ever, before the concept and motivation for the process is understood. That raises the question of what exactly is being accomplished with such a curricula? Learning techniques without understanding them does no good in preparing students for college. At the college level emphasis is on understanding, not memorization and computational prowess.
3. Teaching concepts that are developmentally inappropriate. Teaching advanced algebra in middle school pushes concepts on students that are beyond normal development at that age. Walking is not taught to six-month olds and reading is not taught to two-year olds because children are not developmentally ready at those ages for those skills. When it comes to math, all teachers dream of arriving at a crystal clear explanation of a concept that will cause an immediate “aha” moment for the student. But those flashes of insight cannot happen until the student is developmentally ready. Because math involves knowledge and understanding of symbolic representations for abstract concepts it is extremely difficult to short cut development.
This is the problem with teaching eighth-graders techniques such as matrix inversion. The arithmetic steps can be memorized but it will be a long time, if ever, before the concept and motivation for the process is understood. That raises the question of what exactly is being accomplished with such a curricula? Learning techniques without understanding them does no good in preparing students for college. At the college level emphasis is on understanding, not memorization and computational prowess.
3. Teaching concepts that are developmentally inappropriate. Teaching advanced algebra in middle school pushes concepts on students that are beyond normal development at that age. Walking is not taught to six-month olds and reading is not taught to two-year olds because children are not developmentally ready at those ages for those skills. When it comes to math, all teachers dream of arriving at a crystal clear explanation of a concept that will cause an immediate “aha” moment for the student. But those flashes of insight cannot happen until the student is developmentally ready. Because math involves knowledge and understanding of symbolic representations for abstract concepts it is extremely difficult to short cut development.
Read the whole article here:
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200910/backpage.cfm
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