by President Bush’s National Math Advisory Panel has released its final report and several Pulse Contributing Editors discuss the merits of the effort while none if surprised by the panel’s focus on "core math skills."
• Roger Schank, Ph.D. challenges many of the assumptions underlying the report.
• David Thornburg, Ph.D. takes issue with the panel chair’s comments about constructivism.
• Marvin Minsky, Ph.D. (via an external blog) explores why math is hard to learn.
• Gary Stager, Ph.D. discusses the likely harm caused by the report’s inauthentic recommendations.
• Math teacher, Michael Paul Goldenberg, wonders if anything is new.
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Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.
As a future math teacher, it’s interesting that the panel put so much emphasis on teaching fractions. As many of your links said, it isn’t the fact that things aren’t being taught, but that they aren’t being taught in context. Students don’t understand the math because they don’t see how it will be useful in the future. Math is a part of our everyday lives no matter what we do and it’s important that as educators we point this out to our students. We need to teach them in context, like cooking with them while teacher fractions or building a small model while working with area. Make math real life!