Posted on 06/30/2016 2:27:32 PM PDT by Lorianne
audio 19:01
“Hacker's accessible arguments offer plenty to think about and should serve as a clarion call to students, parents, and educators who decry the one-size-fits-all approach to schooling.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A lively argument against the assumption that if the United States is to stay competitive in a global economy, our students require advanced training in mathematics.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The Math Myth persuasively and satisfyingly debunks assertions about the practical value of requiring all students to master higher-level mathematics—and also points up the real harm caused by the Common Core standards and college-admission exams, which are constructed on those dubious claims. In a friendly and accessible style, Hacker, himself no slouch in terms of quantitative expertise, systematically demolishes every argument used to support the advanced-math-for-all position. His book is now my go-to resource on this topic.”
—Alfie Kohn, author of Schooling Beyond Measure and The Homework Myth
“The Math Myth is an important book. Hacker demolishes some totally unrealistic policies that will prevent many students from ever receiving a high school diploma and leading useful lives.”
—Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error and The Death and Life of the Great American School System
“The Math Myth vividly demonstrates that America’s uncritical celebration of school mathematics does a disservice to students, institutions of learning, and the wide array of urgent public needs. His book is important and timely—and a great read.”
—Howard Gardner, Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of The Unschooled Mind
Reviews but no synopsis????
Reviewed/supported by Howard Gardner. Author/creator of the multiple intelligences movement? That Howard Gardner? That right there tells you all you need to know about the content of this book. Gardner is a loon.
Can’t hack math?
Here’s your participation trophy ...
It’s actually a good interview and argument.
I do not know of Howard Gardner
Part of the original essay in the NY Times, 2012:
“....It’s true that students in Finland, South Korea and Canada score better on mathematics tests. But it’s their perseverance, not their classroom algebra, that fits them for demanding jobs.
Nor is it clear that the math we learn in the classroom has any relation to the quantitative reasoning we need on the job. John P. Smith III, an educational psychologist at Michigan State University who has studied math education, has found that “mathematical reasoning in workplaces differs markedly from the algorithms taught in school.” Even in jobs that rely on so-called STEM credentials — science, technology, engineering, math — considerable training occurs after hiring, including the kinds of computations that will be required. Toyota, for example, recently chose to locate a plant in a remote Mississippi county, even though its schools are far from stellar. It works with a nearby community college, which has tailored classes in “machine tool mathematics.”
That sort of collaboration has long undergirded German apprenticeship programs. I fully concur that high-tech knowledge is needed to sustain an advanced industrial economy. But we’re deluding ourselves if we believe the solution is largely academic....”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-necessary.html?_r=0
It is the math that teaches perserverance.
There’s not a human that ever lived that knew too much math. This is drivel.
Most people can get by with basic math (including fractions), along with statistics. The latter is necessary for business degrees as well.
Computer programming and architecture doesn't require advanced mathematics, either. What is needed in those disciplines is the ability to decompose a problem into steps that can solved with existing code or newly developed code.
Frankly, I think the attempt to teach advanced match is actually counter-productive, because too many people get frustrated by it and throw their hands up. They just think: "Math is too hard for me", when the real problem is they are focused on stuff they can't use.
Frankly, I think the attempt to teach advanced match is actually counter-productive, because too many people get frustrated by it and throw their hands up. They just think: "Math is too hard for me", when the real problem is they are focused on stuff they can't use.
“Computer programming and architecture doesn’t require advanced mathematics, either.”
Seriously? If you can’t do an integral I don’t want you anywhere near my blueprints or code.
No, it is society and family that teaches perseverance. Or not, in the case of modern America. Teaching math has nothing to do with it.
I took calculus in high school. Since I graduated 40 years ago, I have never needed any concept beyond algebra and trig. I realize some fields would require it, but statistics would have been more useful to me than calculus.
Hacker's gotten people to talk about his work, though, so in that sense I guess he won.
At Michigan State I was required to take, and pass, a statistics class that was aimed at broadcast majors (my major); I used it just enough in the following years to more than justify the time and modest cost. Even used it as a Navy public relations officer.
Exacly. Mastery of tough subjects teaches discipline and self worth. Two qualities needed for success.
Oops exactly
I did OS development for two decades. Never once did I have to "do an integral". However, I did mentor and teach people with liberal arts degrees like sociology to become productive developers, because they could do what I described: decompose a problem into manageable steps and implement it.
System programming is almost entirely boolean and integer math. The only time I did anything close to floating point math was when I was working on the floating point exception code for a processor that couldn't handle it on its own.
These days, the vast majority of applications are manipulation of strings. If there's any math at all, it's integers, dollars/cents, or percentages. And, there are open-source libraries that can do just about any number-crunching you might need.
I left out the word "system" from "computer system architecture", so perhaps you misunderstood that. I'm not talking about the design of actual hardware. There's little call for that, as commodity hardware can do almost anything other than very specialized tasks. Today, computer system architecture design is little more than putting together existing components and/or linking them together in a network. The architect spends his/her time specifying these components to meet the requirement(s).
And that's where I spent the last two decades of my career, analyzing these systems and pointing out where they neglected to consider how the design or implementation constrained the performance of the entire system.
That article is dehydrated rock hard stupid.
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