Posing as the arena in which students will finally get to engage in true mathematical reasoning, this virus attacks mathematics at its heart, destroying the very essence of creative rational argument, poisoning the students’ enjoyment of this fascinating and beautiful subject, and permanently disabling them from thinking about math in a natural and intuitive way.
I haven’t even finished reading Lockhart, and I am already unspeakably glad that I was homeschooled by a mom who cared about what math really was.
To add something of substance to the conversation: coming at math from an understanding of the game of it instead of the rote work, I’ve noticed that I’m better at applying it than most of my classmates in my (well-regarded state university) engineering school. I can’t say how much of that is “innate” “talent”, with all the sarcasm that the quotation marks imply, but I can’t help but see how little of the rubbish that Lockhart describes was inflicted upon me and wonder if there’s a correlation.
Scott Aaronson writes about A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart.
For example, a quote about school geometry:
I haven’t even finished reading Lockhart, and I am already unspeakably glad that I was homeschooled by a mom who cared about what math really was.
To add something of substance to the conversation: coming at math from an understanding of the game of it instead of the rote work, I’ve noticed that I’m better at applying it than most of my classmates in my (well-regarded state university) engineering school. I can’t say how much of that is “innate” “talent”, with all the sarcasm that the quotation marks imply, but I can’t help but see how little of the rubbish that Lockhart describes was inflicted upon me and wonder if there’s a correlation.
compared to what? evidence?
The Lockhart piece is great and deserves to be much better known. The only bad thing about it is that it pisses the reader off.
Thanks for the link to Aaronson’s commentary; I hadn’t seen it.
It does? I thought it was more heartbreakingly tragic than anything else.