My wife sent me this video from John Bennett, a math teacher. This was posted to YouTube back on 11/8/11.
In fact, if it were up to me, I’d would no longer require math to be taught…in middle school and high school.
NOTES:
- 300 million people in the U.S. (as John mentioned back in October 2011)
- 1.5 million engineers
- 1/2 of a percent; and you can add another 1/2 of a percent for other kinds of jobs that require that kind of math
- That leaves 99% of us in the United States who don’t use what we learned about in middle school and high school math classes. But the problem is, math has caused major stress for people in the last 40 years.
- John Bennett had some major cognitive dissonance to the reasons WHY he was suggesting his students know the math concepts that he was trying to relay.
- He came to ask, “When do most of us use math in real life?”
- Money. Financial stuff. Balancing checkbook. Tipping. Cooking and carpentry.
- Why are we still teaching algebra? Because it teaches us about inductive and deductive reasoning. Math helps us develop that kind of reasoning.
- So a better plan would be to:
- Let people who want to take math in middle school and high school take it.
- For the rest of the students, provide strategy games and logic puzzles that help develop those cognitive reasoning skills.
From DSC:
When this math teacher meets people out in society, people confess how much stress math brought to them in school….and they’re aren’t joking.
Given that we are all required to be lifelong learners these days, I love what John Bennett is saying here…because we really aren’t serving society at large by requiring math be taught in middle school and high school.
- It causes stress and very negative learning experiences for many people.
- We don’t use it. (By the way, I could plug and chug ok, but I had no idea what I was doing. No real understanding. I haven’t used algebra and/or calculus since my youth.)
What does it take to change our curricula like that?! Is it possible? I sure hope so.
