Re: Some grave concerns to the US education

Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> eric blair <"bordermine(cut)"@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> It was well recognized in the "old days" that the one real
>>> mathematics course below the upper division college level
>>> was the "Euclid" geometry course, teaching axioms, theorems,
>>> and proofs, NOT memorizing facts and computational methods.
>>> This got perverted, and the algebra course got lowered, by
>>> the aim to have everyone take the same programs.  Also, the
>>> previously mentioned changes made memorization, routine, and
>>> regurgitation the process, and getting grades the only goal
>>> which anyone could see.
>>
>> There has been a kind of holy war in the ed schools against ANY
>> memorization (usually dismissed as "drill and kill") with the
>> ultimate result that many elementary school students can't absorb
>> anything and have no foundation upon which to build. Would anybody
>> argue against memorizing the alphabet?
>
> It's useful for alphabetizing and looking things up in the dictionary.
> But it isn't worth spending a lot of time on.

Don't drink and drive. :)

>> The 1990 California "framework" do***ent for the math curriculum did
>> not even make a statement on the question of learning the
>> multiplication tables. The 2000 framework finally used the phrase
>> "committed to memory" with respect to elementary operations on
>> numbers, but couldn't plainly state "memorize the times tables". If
>> you don't know the times tables, when you get to algebra you can't
>> construct the various possibilities involved in factoring equations
>> with an "X squared" term in them.
>
> Of course you can.  You look at a times table.  It may be inconvenient
> and slow not to memorize it, but it is hardly essential.

How many people do you figure are on the earth that don't know their times
tables to say twelve, but can factor a quadratic?  I'm guessing it hovers
around zero.

Slainte,
Fletch