A Profile of Mathematics Teaching as Part of a General Education

Abstract

The starting point for this book was the following proposition: Conventional mathematics instruction at public schools does justice neither to society’s requirements for the future nor to the individual needs and qualification interests of the majority of students. This stipulation is highly plausible since it is supported by a variety of observable phenomena.

“... Our teachers use a very wrong theory of how to understand things, when they shape our children’s mathematics, not into robust networks of ideas, but into those long, thin, fragile chains or shaky towers of professional mathematics. A chain breaks whenever there’s just one single weak link, just as a slender tower falls whenever we disturb it just a little. ... Perhaps this helps explain how our society arranges to make most children terrified of mathematics. We think we’re making things easier for them to find what’s right, by managing to make things go all wrong almost all the time! So when our children learn about numbers (or about anything else) I would prefer that they build meshy networks in their minds, not slender chains or flimsy towers.”¹⁵⁵

Marvin Minsky, 1985