Re: the calculus wars
Timothy Koschmann (tkoschmann who-is-at acm.org)
Fri, 21 May 1999 15:05:33 -0500
Nate wrote:
>Along the same lines the discussion of what in school relates to work is
>itself problematic. Maybe what is being taught in school is not a good fit
>for what is needed in the work world, but is that necessarily all bad. I
>don't want to imply that the way we teach math is acceptable, but rather by
>comparing it to math in the "real world" may not be all its cracked up to
>be. Maybe we should look at school as an activity in its own right rather
>than one that prepares for something else. As was mentioned in the
>construction example, the type of math used in school is rarely used in
>work. But, a side effect of mass production in contrast to lets say a
>tailor is the division of labor in which math might not exist as a whole
>but disbursed through the division of labor. Maybe the uniqueness of math
>in school, not that it is, could be historical in that it allows one to
>see the whole which would be impossible in the "real world". While I
>dislike how education has been constructed as a unique form of cultural
>activity, I am not willing to give up the ideal of education as unique form
>of cultural activity.
I agree, Nate, that we don't want to reduce education to mere job
preparation (a concern, not only at the high school level, but increasingly
at post-secondary levels, as well). I also like the idea of providing a
broader conceptual view of how mathematics enters into a process of
production. My beef (not necessarily with you) is that what often
characterizes the "unique form of cultural activity" in schools is the way
in which we manage to take things like math, writing, reading, second
languages and pound and dessicate them into such an unpalatable mass that
it becomes impossible for students to see them as something useful and
desirable. I still hold out the possibility, however, that we may be able
to invent some new forms of cultural activity involving trig and calculus
that might serve the students well in their later lives. ---Tim