Pascal's Other Apology

Carlos Bueno:

That means, as teachers, we're probably starting in the wrong place.

It don't think it has to be this way. What do we expect children to understand about math? Negative numbers, zero, exponents, the square root of two, pi. In those boring little facts I see hope, precisely because they are boring little facts. It wasn't always like that. Once upon a time, the existence of negative numbers was considered the most difficult question in the world. People died arguing about the hypotenuse, for God's sake. The fact that we can teach these things to innocent children is evidence of progress. Real, measurable, personally empowering progress. The kind of progress we haven't had time to make in computer science.

If the mathematicians are making fun of you for being too complicated, you know there's work to do.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 28, 2012 3:37 AM
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