Have We Gotten Math Education All Wrong? A Conversation About The Ecosystem, Historical Pedagogical Approaches And A Challening Standstill

When I was in school it was determined that I had lots of potential for math and standardized tests confirmed this. But I could not think of a more useless skill. Then when I got into business, a particular colleague, one who was a little conniving, taught me how to use math to generate profits, reduce losses and game the bonus system. I owe him a great deal. Like Winston Churchill he was deeply flawed but, from my perspective, he was exactly what I needed to grow in an area that was of considerable use to me in business. My command of math - together with my skill at collecting intel - made me the equal of small company CEO's in conversation. And, having taught myself to code, I went on to correct a published assertion by a famous mathematician which piqued the interest of the NSA. Wolfram is right. Bring on the problems to be solved and choose the tool to solve it, learning the necessary instructions to use that tool.

My education in mathematics was third step based and so firstly I have associated calculation with math and secondly a calculating mindset is what made me run from math as a youngster. Now we have powerful machines to absolutely transform the computing function, and here is what Conrad Wolfram has shown me today is to bust through my own thoughts on calculation, because prior to this talk, I did assume the calculation as the chief framework. Had the Step 3 compute been the transformation when I was a kid, an educational focus based on Steps 1 formulation, Step 2 abstraction and Step 4 and aided by powerful technologies would have transformed my relationship with mathematics. In English as a youngster the punishment for misbehaving in the class was to write out some statement on the board hundreds of times, and so I knew that agony of that, so I avoided that punishment, but I went to math classes and repetition is the chief mode of learning. The net result is that I have become mathematically handicapped in my thinking, and had I not been, it would added far greater choices in my life. There is no point in looking backwards at what might have been, but plenty of opportunity as a middle aged person to believe that it is never too late to change our thinking. Hopefully there might be many people who share the same revulsion for how we were taught math as a kid and that these people can move their mindsets from what might have been to what this focus on Step 1, 2 and 4 transforms. There is a great gift in the way Conrad Wolfram has explained this as the way forward for math education and I hope it inspires educators towards change, which also makes optimal use of computing power and therefore becomes a mathematical liberation of thinking. As I begin to address my learned helplessness and aversion to math, I do not want to do this as a "Step 3 victim" but as a "Step 3 transformer". The book I picked up a couple of days ago - "The Joy of x" by Steven Strogatz is helping with this change towards the mathematical liberation of my thinking. It is still baby steps for me and there is a long way to go before I unlearn the Machiavellian approach to math education I was subjected to, and here I do mean "calculating" and move to the antonym of Machiavellian which one definition defines as ingenious - which is a better frame of mind than simply than ethical, moral and principled - ingenuity is what I see a focus on Step 1, 2 and 4 portend, and Step 3 is an acknowledgement of the powerful friend we call the computer - and I will praise the end of the "calculating educator". [CityVP Manjit - 08 Apr 2016 - Change & Science]

A must read for all teachers and academics. Thanks a lot Robyn D. Shulman, M.Ed..

A+ as always Robyn??