Re: the calculus wars
Konopak (jkonopak who-is-at ou.edu)
Fri, 21 May 1999 12:10:01 -0500
Tho i cannot provide the provenance, i am fond of this particular algorithm
for explaining the "need" for calculus and other abstruse maths in school:
You "need" algebra because algebra is the grammar of calculus which is the
"language" of all modern /business/commerce/engineering/finance/science
(etc)\...but it must be presented in schools in such a way as to disguise
the importance of the relations of the information and knowledge on offer
with the real lived lives of the students, as well as to alienate students
from the sources of possible (critical) understanding of those relations.
Imho, school maths are taught the ways they are for the purposes of
mystifying these "subjects" while constructing learners as mere objects in
the universes they (algebra, calculus, trig, etc) describe and explain.
(btw, and again without the exact provenance, i think i heard or read
somewhere that "algebra" as a meaningful sign first appeared in English in
16th Century (ca 1550) England on "shingles" hung out over doors out from
which issued, when the services were utilized, shrieks and screams and
whimpers and all other manner of expression of pain, because the
"algebrist" was in the business of bone setting; which usage derives from
the classical arabic science that, expressed in English, would have been
understood as the "science of balancing and straightening"
cheers, chers,
konopak