Mathematica speaks

Well maybe not Mathematica, the calculus software, but the authors, Theodore Gray and Jerry Glynn, do. About education and computers, and education and kids, and policy leaders. Just under 6000 words and worth every minute you spend reading it. I'll comment on different aspects of this post shortly, but here a few tidbits that I hope will encourage you to read the piece:

Tidbit #1

Technology's greatest contribution is to permit people to be incompetent at a larger and larger range of things. Only by embracing such incompetence is the human race able to progress.

Tidbit #2

Theo: No one can learn to think without having something to think about. *** If you start a lesson off by telling the students "This is going to be easy", you are simultaneously telling them "We had to make this easy because we don't think you're capable of doing anything hard". And when the lesson is over, the only sense of accomplishment they can feel is that they did something easy. So what?

Learning is hard work. If you are not working hard, you are not learning. Period. Kids love hard work, as long as they see where it's going and why. Instead of killing that energy by giving them something easy, we should foster it by giving them something really hard. We should tell them it's hard. We should give them the chance to do something meaningful.

Jerry: Readers should be aware that Theo is the father of one three year old and a couple-odd babies, while I am the father of four adults. It is well known that people at the beginning of the child rearing process have much stronger opinions than those who have completed at least two children. However, in this case I have to agree with Theo.

What are your thoughts? (And thanks to Blog of a math teacher for linking to this piece.

Comments

[Jan Nordgreen]

Learning in school should be as similar to learning in real life as possible.

From that axiom follows some consequences not grasped by most teachers and administrators, but expressed very well in the article.

Thanks for the link!

I added it to my new online journal 'Free Learning of Mathematics', http://simpler-solutions.net/pmachinefree/flom/flom.php?id=P206