Re: Paul Lockhart's book reviewed in the L.A. Times!

From: Rin Watt <katecwatt_at_gmail.com_at_hypermail.org>
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:33:25 -0000

I would certainly agree that, as taught, most math is not useful to most people. Teaching problem-solving and logic and the "poetry" math types say they see there would be much better, would make kids smarter, even if they didn't go into careers that use any math. Of this I approve. Such an approach might not have made me so math-phobic.

As for English.... In today's high schools, there is very little literature being taught (nor grammar, nor critical thinking). A former student, now a high school teacher, tells me they can no longer assign novels, because the kids can't/won't read them!!! They use only short stories, and the kids write primarily about how the stories make them feel, or how their own experiences are similar, or about what they've learned from the "moral" of the story.

Or, to quote Dickens,

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom warehouse....

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of Facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic.
Received on 2009-04-15 09:33:32