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I really wish that education looked more like Conrad's vision in: Conrad Wolfram’s TED Talk: “Stop Teaching Calculating, Start Teaching Math” From very early

I really wish that education looked more like Conrad's vision in: Conrad Wolfram’s TED Talk: “Stop Teaching Calculating, Start Teaching Math” From very early on, at least in my education, concepts and the reason 'why do this at all' was stripped from the curriculum. The other thing that I feel is lacking is confidence building, which to me is directly connected. When solving a real life problem, the problem does not care about your GPA, rank, etc. I have had well respected professors tell me about a hard problem they are working on, that I later solved with a google search... Bringing together tools and concepts is very powerful. Solving real problems with them builds confidence and passion. Learning not to reinvent the wheel, even though you understand the concepts that would enable you to, is what allows us to cooperate and build to new heights. Empowerment.

yarian 16y ago
I saw Conrad's talk a few months ago and I couldn't agree more. In fact I am attempting to put his theory in general by teaching math through programming at the moment. I wanted to add a caveat to your confidence point though. We need to engender the right kind of confidence. A lot of kids are already confident, even arrogant. Yet it's completely unfounded since they are not actually acquiring human capital. We need to promote the kind of confidence that comes from taking a hard problem, banging your head against it for a week, solving it, and repeating. The kind of confidence that comes from previous hard work.
- Lost_BiomedE 16y ago
  Agreed. The current confidence you speak of is smoke and mirrors, the arrogance hits a brick wall and turns to depression. In regards to math through programming, I always wondered how well it would work to have a supervised lab that students could use to write up a program verified as their own. Then, allow the student to use this in coursework. The geeks currently do it behind the scenes with their TI calculators anyway. Of course, increasing complexity of coursework would require them to revisit or rewrite their programs.
  - yarian 16y ago
    I don't teach math the way you are thinking about it though. What I mean by math is more like the way of thinking and not specific math concepts. I mean they learn boolean logic but really it is more of gaining comfort with defining and working with functions, domain, range, and variables.

yarian 16y ago

I saw Conrad's talk a few months ago and I couldn't agree more. In fact I am attempting to put his theory in general by teaching math through programming at the moment. I wanted to add a caveat to your confidence point though. We need to engender the right kind of confidence. A lot of kids are already confident, even arrogant. Yet it's completely unfounded since they are not actually acquiring human capital. We need to promote the kind of confidence that comes from taking a hard problem, banging your head against it for a week, solving it, and repeating. The kind of confidence that comes from previous hard work.

Lost_BiomedE 16y ago
Agreed. The current confidence you speak of is smoke and mirrors, the arrogance hits a brick wall and turns to depression. In regards to math through programming, I always wondered how well it would work to have a supervised lab that students could use to write up a program verified as their own. Then, allow the student to use this in coursework. The geeks currently do it behind the scenes with their TI calculators anyway. Of course, increasing complexity of coursework would require them to revisit or rewrite their programs.
- yarian 16y ago
  I don't teach math the way you are thinking about it though. What I mean by math is more like the way of thinking and not specific math concepts. I mean they learn boolean logic but really it is more of gaining comfort with defining and working with functions, domain, range, and variables.