flâneur

| Works on Mathematics Education

dam.brown.edu · 338 words · saved by 1 readers

My experience working in both pure and applied mathematics has given me a strong belief that, for almost all people, math is best learned first in the context of authentic applications and only afterwards, abstracted to a general setting. Moreover, a relatively small percentage of high school students will specialize in 'STEM' (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) professions and they can learn this in electives with more heavy duty math. I ask: how many quadratic equations do 99% of US citizens ever solve? Most students will benefit instead from applications that will actually be used in their adult lives. I've tried to argue for this approach in a variety of settings.

Some time ago, Klaus Peters published as a slim chapbook the wonderful essay of Hans Magnus Enzensberger "Drawbridge Up" and asked me to write a short preface. The ideas seem still relevant in this age of the "Common Core". Here it is: I am accustomed, as a professional mathematician, to living in a sort of vacuum, surrounded by people who, as in the first paragraph of Enzensberger's essay, declare with an odd sort of pride that they are mathematically illiterate. How astonishing to come to the International Congress and find a distinguished poet and essayist who analyzes this problem with…

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