Comments on: Math for people http://www.emilsit.net/blog/archives/math-for-people/ Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:58:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Emil Sit » Exploring math curricula http://www.emilsit.net/blog/archives/math-for-people/comment-page-1/#comment-25 Emil Sit » Exploring math curricula Fri, 12 May 2006 14:13:40 +0000 http://www.emilsit.net/blog/archives/math-for-people/#comment-25 <p>[...] I still think teaching the ability to abstract is what’s ultimately needed. Mark Shuttleworth has the same idea; he blogged yesterday about his project to help develop curriculum that enable students to learn analytical skills through programming. [...]</p> [...] I still think teaching the ability to abstract is what’s ultimately needed. Mark Shuttleworth has the same idea; he blogged yesterday about his project to help develop curriculum that enable students to learn analytical skills through programming. [...]

]]> By: Hm, should I put my real name? http://www.emilsit.net/blog/archives/math-for-people/comment-page-1/#comment-9 Hm, should I put my real name? Tue, 04 Apr 2006 10:32:13 +0000 http://www.emilsit.net/blog/archives/math-for-people/#comment-9 <p>An article in the latest American Educator seems to support a great deal of what you've laid out here (with some very technical terminology, like "chunking" :-). </p> <p>http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring06/willingham.htm</p> <p>In the last couple of paragraphs and the sidebar (linked at the end) Willingham suggests caution about trying to directly teach kids how to "think clearly", and instead seems to imply that such skills will be learned automatically over time if the subject matter is engrossing enough.</p> <p>Steve's "breadth first, not depth-first" approach sounds like it could be great for someone who somehow already has good skills at abstraction (chunking), but doesn't know any math. For someone without those kinds of skills, that curriculum would likely just confuse someone without them, since, as Willingham (and Hirsch, too, in the same issue) stresses, material is best understood and best retained if it can be related to a thick network of already-deeply-familiar knowledge. The MIT "firehose" may be fine at a college level, but not so much for elementary schools.</p> <p>(Hirsch's pet project is a K-8 curriculum called "Core Knowledge" which is supposed to cover the most basic, important knowledge, the kinds of things everybody ought to know. My very cursory poking around hasn't yet been able to uncover whether maths are included and if so which topics in what order.)</p> An article in the latest American Educator seems to support a great deal of what you’ve laid out here (with some very technical terminology, like “chunking” :-).

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring06/willingham.htm

In the last couple of paragraphs and the sidebar (linked at the end) Willingham suggests caution about trying to directly teach kids how to “think clearly”, and instead seems to imply that such skills will be learned automatically over time if the subject matter is engrossing enough.

Steve’s “breadth first, not depth-first” approach sounds like it could be great for someone who somehow already has good skills at abstraction (chunking), but doesn’t know any math. For someone without those kinds of skills, that curriculum would likely just confuse someone without them, since, as Willingham (and Hirsch, too, in the same issue) stresses, material is best understood and best retained if it can be related to a thick network of already-deeply-familiar knowledge. The MIT “firehose” may be fine at a college level, but not so much for elementary schools.

(Hirsch’s pet project is a K-8 curriculum called “Core Knowledge” which is supposed to cover the most basic, important knowledge, the kinds of things everybody ought to know. My very cursory poking around hasn’t yet been able to uncover whether maths are included and if so which topics in what order.)

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