Re: Are teachers really so unwilling to learn?

[bickiia@earlham.edu]

Barret Dolph <white129@ms7.hinet.net> wrote:
>As far as Asia goes the math teaching is better than the US but with a

>fatal flaw. That is, logic is much  worse. Simply put, if in the US 
>the level of mathematical knowledge is 6 and  3 is the level of 
>mathematical knowledge used after schooling here the knowledge is 9
> and the level used is 1.

How do you mean?  That they learn the math in school, but never use it
or know it well enough to put it into a real situation?  Or they never
extend mathematical logic beyond the mathematical sphere?  Or they learn
mostly math skills, not math logic?  Or, lastly, society is structured
with more specialization, and beyond those people who need to know math
(accountants and engineers) no one else get any practice?

Or a few of those put together?  Mostly I'm just curious about how
education really works in different countries -- most of what you read
in the US about other countries focuses only on test scores, which are a
very small part of the picture.


>> Should we start pulling out some math curriculum and trying to
>> integrate its ideas into computer curriculum?  Hmm... I'll have to
>> think about it more.
>
>I cannot say this will work. In high school I loved physics but got 
>into trouble because I hadn't taken calculus. True, my math teacher 
>was very poor at teaching but learning math through science didn't 
>work very well.

I was thinking about it with a different spin.  Not learning math
through computers, or computers through math, but for *us* to learn from
math how to teach these ideas.  If we want to help people learn about
some of the abstract notions that are shared with math, there's been a
lot more effort in these directions by math educators than computer
educators.

>For general math teaching you may ask Hilaire who is on this list. He
>is quite modest about his teaching but his thinking about teaching 
>math and geometry is way beyond most teachers.

I don't know if Hilaire is following this thread... if you are, how
would you go about teaching something like representation and encoding
from a mathematical perspective?  Or any of the other ideas that underly
computing?

  -- Ian