If you haven’t read the above article, take a few minutes to do so. It’s quite well written, though I have no doubt it will be extremely controversial. Already the discussions in the social media have exploded (at least among my fellow math nerds, that is).
One of the quotes that I like:
All this worry, however, is based on the assumption that there is a single established body of mathematical skills that everyone needs to know to be prepared for 21st-century careers. This assumption is wrong. The truth is that different sets of math skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.
At the end of the day, I think that this is an argument about values. From my point of view, every (math and otherwise) class that I’ve taken has expanded my mind into new regions. That being said, if the goal of education is merely to prepare people for some minimum level of employment, then high school need not have anything outside of basic arithmetic, perhaps a second language, some basic writing, perhaps a few courses on usage of computers, etc…
Is that what we want? Do we want a society where everyone has the minimal education necessary to be a consumer? Certainly, our current educational system is not set up this way. It is set up to assist students to become moderately well rounded citizens with an exposure to many different sets of ideas about history, language, art, science, and yes, mathematics. Whether these courses translate into useful skills for jobs is unclear. I have never had any trouble getting a set of skills I needed for a particular job, whether on my own or by taking the appropriate courses necessary. I think the flaw in the whole argument is that people assume that there is a point in time where we say “I have learned enough to never have to learn again!” It seems that as a species, we should remove this mental block, and merely give students a taste of many things, then let them decide the track to move into, which can have courses that are chosen as prerequisites by experts that know their business.
What do you think?
Sean M. R. Crowell 