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If there is a specific discussion direction you have in mind, you should put it forth. That clip helps add more context, for sure. I don't have much to add, bu

If there is a specific discussion direction you have in mind, you should put it forth. That clip helps add more context, for sure. I don't have much to add, but I'll state that I adore Papert's vision, and that even those who disagree about "what we should do on Monday" should keep an eye on the vision. If it does not directly inform what steps to take in the short term, at least it should have an indirect influence. By a similar token, tearing everything down and trying to rebuilding it from scratch carefully is famously tempting and notoriously ineffective for software systems. Even with software it's hard to make that claim flat out, and I shouldn't dare try to draw an analogy to social systems, since, you know, revolutions happen and for good reason. But I am glad there are at least some people (though maybe there are relatively too many) with an eye toward incrementalism. There are many similar ideas to Papert's and Kay's that could perhaps be organized under a theme of being visionary or radical or in stark contrast to the status quo. Coming to mind are: A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart [1] (2002) or much more narrowly Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differential Equations by Gian-Carlo Rota [2] (1997). I'm also reminded of some work by Felienne that questions the idea that computer programming in particular is not amenable to traditional instruction. This idea is popular with this era's programmers (perhaps because for the most part, at least up until recently, programmers do not learn from school) [3]. [1] https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.html https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_03_08.htm... [2] https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf [3] https://www.felienne.com/archives/6150 https://www.felienne.com/archives/6150

ontouchstart 6y ago
Thank you for the links. To be honest I don't know which direction the discussion might go. The context is this thread I posted on an Aug 1, 2016 discussion (Seymour Papert has died) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12202330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12202330 I have forgotten about it until four year later. Can't say we as a society had made any fundamental progress in education technology in the last 4 years, or 25 years. What about the next 4 years?
todd8 6y ago
Thank you for pointing out Professor Rota’s remarks on teaching differential equations; He was my Professor for my first course in Probability about 50 years ago. He was an unforgettable teacher! Once, I went to visit him during office hours. There was a light on visible behind a frosted window so I knocked on the door and awaited a reply. Instead of a reply, I heard a strange ring of what sounded like a chime. I waited a second and knocked again, and again the strange bell-like chime sounded in response. I peeked though the door and there was Professor Rota. Surrounded by stacks of books, on his desk, on a table, in mounds on the floor, Professor Rota, wearing as he did every day a three piece brown suit with a red tie and holding a large musical bell said “Well, come in!” My kids are now in their mid 20’s and I’ve been disappointed by the way that they were taught math before college. The “Industrial/political educational complex” has convinced the school that tablets and laptops and math books full of colorful pictures are what students need. The teachers are sent to workshops where they learn things like Russian Peasant and Egyptian multiplication. Sadly, many kids come out of such programs with remarkably poor basic math skills. I have a math degree and was comfortable tutoring my kids in math, but the schools themselves should have done a much better job.
- ontouchstart 6y ago
  What a great story. Reminds me how I met Jerome Bruner 20 years ago at his Greenwich Village apartment.
- gugagore 6y ago
  It’s always wonderful to hear personal accounts! I don’t think I understand the sentiment around the teacher workshops that you mentioned. How do you feel about the workshops teaching teachers about an “alternative” multiplication algorithm?
  - todd8 6y ago
    Yes, I didn't explain myself very well. The second paragraph touches on my feelings about introducing "technology" into math education for kids. Generally, I see very little value of introducing tablets, laptops, or computers as essential items in math instruction. And likewise, I see very little value in instructing children to use alternative methods for the fundamental operations of arithmetic. I understand math, and I use math professionally in my work. I don't consider myself a mathematician; I'm far from that, but I have had at over twenty-five university courses on mathematics while pursuing degrees in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics from some of the best schools in the world. Big book publishers lock schools into using a particular Math curriculum. The schools invest in a set of books that fit together from year to year to cover the basics of elementary, lower school, and high school math subjects. The publishers compete with one another by providing their own unique spin on how math should be taught, and I've seen several counterproductive approaches while my kids were in school. It's virtually impossible to get a school to change its approach. The schools commit to very large multi-year contract to purchase books across the entire system. Furthermore, the people making the decisions aren't themselves heavy users of math and are easily swayed by the sophisticated marketing and sales techniques used to justify each publisher's approach. I had to listen to wide-eyed school math consultant explain to me that there is "more than one way to perform multiplication that gets the same result!" as if this was some startling and life changing revelation. For those that don't yet have kids and don't realize what I'm talking about. I'll sum it up: (a + b) * (c + d) = ac + ad + bc + bd but its also true that: (a + b) * (c + d) = ad + bc + ac + ad Oh wow! Now, add a grid and a bunch of lines and pull the wool over the eyes of the people buying the books. See [1] I studied one curriculum, Everyday Math, more than others in an attempt to get my children's school to consider an alternative. Everyday Math, like other curriculum, is based on work done at a University Education department. The University of Chicago is behind Everyday Math. It isn't the worst program in use, but in my opinion it isn't the best either. One glaring problem with the program was the focus on teaching elementary arithmetic operations using alternative methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I attended every presentation for parents at the schools on Everyday Math. I read the papers from the Education department at the University of Chicago that justified these alternative methods and I disagree with their conclusions. (For one thing, they completely misrepresent the Knuth's Art of Computer Programming volume 3 as justification for why learning these alternatives are useful.) After studying the subject, I very much consider the approach used in Singapore for elementary math education to be better. The books are inexpensive (they are simple, straightforward black and white texts) and written in English so they could easily be adopted by schools in the USA. I learned arithmetic in the US many years ago. The way it is being taught now is much worse. There is no obvious answer to addressing our schools inability to teach math well. If there was, we would be doing better. I'm no expert so my opinions count very little, but I would like to see less of: tablets, laptops and web-sites; and more of: drills, paper and pencil work, traditional methods and teaching of math basics. Everyone shouldn't learn to code. (Should everyone learn how to fix a car just because we drive them?) Those that are going to learn to code should focus on elementary algebra (even calculus) first. Most people need to learn how to divide fractions and what a percentage means before learning to code. [1] https://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/teaching-topics/computation/mult-lattice/ https://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/teaching-topics/computatio...

ontouchstart 6y ago

Thank you for the links. To be honest I don't know which direction the discussion might go. The context is this thread I posted on an Aug 1, 2016 discussion (Seymour Papert has died) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12202330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12202330 I have forgotten about it until four year later. Can't say we as a society had made any fundamental progress in education technology in the last 4 years, or 25 years. What about the next 4 years?

todd8 6y ago

Thank you for pointing out Professor Rota’s remarks on teaching differential equations; He was my Professor for my first course in Probability about 50 years ago. He was an unforgettable teacher! Once, I went to visit him during office hours. There was a light on visible behind a frosted window so I knocked on the door and awaited a reply. Instead of a reply, I heard a strange ring of what sounded like a chime. I waited a second and knocked again, and again the strange bell-like chime sounded in response. I peeked though the door and there was Professor Rota. Surrounded by stacks of books, on his desk, on a table, in mounds on the floor, Professor Rota, wearing as he did every day a three piece brown suit with a red tie and holding a large musical bell said “Well, come in!” My kids are now in their mid 20’s and I’ve been disappointed by the way that they were taught math before college. The “Industrial/political educational complex” has convinced the school that tablets and laptops and math books full of colorful pictures are what students need. The teachers are sent to workshops where they learn things like Russian Peasant and Egyptian multiplication. Sadly, many kids come out of such programs with remarkably poor basic math skills. I have a math degree and was comfortable tutoring my kids in math, but the schools themselves should have done a much better job.

ontouchstart 6y ago
What a great story. Reminds me how I met Jerome Bruner 20 years ago at his Greenwich Village apartment.
gugagore 6y ago
It’s always wonderful to hear personal accounts! I don’t think I understand the sentiment around the teacher workshops that you mentioned. How do you feel about the workshops teaching teachers about an “alternative” multiplication algorithm?
- todd8 6y ago
  Yes, I didn't explain myself very well. The second paragraph touches on my feelings about introducing "technology" into math education for kids. Generally, I see very little value of introducing tablets, laptops, or computers as essential items in math instruction. And likewise, I see very little value in instructing children to use alternative methods for the fundamental operations of arithmetic. I understand math, and I use math professionally in my work. I don't consider myself a mathematician; I'm far from that, but I have had at over twenty-five university courses on mathematics while pursuing degrees in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics from some of the best schools in the world. Big book publishers lock schools into using a particular Math curriculum. The schools invest in a set of books that fit together from year to year to cover the basics of elementary, lower school, and high school math subjects. The publishers compete with one another by providing their own unique spin on how math should be taught, and I've seen several counterproductive approaches while my kids were in school. It's virtually impossible to get a school to change its approach. The schools commit to very large multi-year contract to purchase books across the entire system. Furthermore, the people making the decisions aren't themselves heavy users of math and are easily swayed by the sophisticated marketing and sales techniques used to justify each publisher's approach. I had to listen to wide-eyed school math consultant explain to me that there is "more than one way to perform multiplication that gets the same result!" as if this was some startling and life changing revelation. For those that don't yet have kids and don't realize what I'm talking about. I'll sum it up: (a + b) * (c + d) = ac + ad + bc + bd but its also true that: (a + b) * (c + d) = ad + bc + ac + ad Oh wow! Now, add a grid and a bunch of lines and pull the wool over the eyes of the people buying the books. See [1] I studied one curriculum, Everyday Math, more than others in an attempt to get my children's school to consider an alternative. Everyday Math, like other curriculum, is based on work done at a University Education department. The University of Chicago is behind Everyday Math. It isn't the worst program in use, but in my opinion it isn't the best either. One glaring problem with the program was the focus on teaching elementary arithmetic operations using alternative methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I attended every presentation for parents at the schools on Everyday Math. I read the papers from the Education department at the University of Chicago that justified these alternative methods and I disagree with their conclusions. (For one thing, they completely misrepresent the Knuth's Art of Computer Programming volume 3 as justification for why learning these alternatives are useful.) After studying the subject, I very much consider the approach used in Singapore for elementary math education to be better. The books are inexpensive (they are simple, straightforward black and white texts) and written in English so they could easily be adopted by schools in the USA. I learned arithmetic in the US many years ago. The way it is being taught now is much worse. There is no obvious answer to addressing our schools inability to teach math well. If there was, we would be doing better. I'm no expert so my opinions count very little, but I would like to see less of: tablets, laptops and web-sites; and more of: drills, paper and pencil work, traditional methods and teaching of math basics. Everyone shouldn't learn to code. (Should everyone learn how to fix a car just because we drive them?) Those that are going to learn to code should focus on elementary algebra (even calculus) first. Most people need to learn how to divide fractions and what a percentage means before learning to code. [1] https://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/teaching-topics/computation/mult-lattice/ https://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/teaching-topics/computatio...