[IAEP] food for thought...

[Alan Kay]

Hi Steve --

The line you quote -- "Science and math were originally discovered together, and they are best learned together now" -- is pretty much the only thing I agree with.

They seem to be unaware of the irony of using a false parallel (between traditional math and Latin) to defend their position. I hope they would be aware of this as a bad argument if it were in a mathematical context, and one wonders why they can't see it as nonsense in prose.

One of the big differences between training and "real education" is that "real education" involves depth, flexibility understanding, multiple points of view from which to regard ideas*and*skills. Let's go to neutral ground for a moment and pick music. Part of playing is training, and one can learn how to play pieces with skills just derived from training. But a good "real education" in music involves an immense amount more -- this shows up in many ways, including in the quality of playing. Training isn't nearly enough.

One of the practical reasons we need to care about children really learning how to think about a wide variety of topics is not for jobs -- though this certainly will help most of the time -- but because we are a republic that has vested the "ultimate powers in the hands of the people" via a form of democracy. As envisioned by Jefferson and others who invented our system, the voting citizens have to be "invested with sufficient discretion" to wield these ultimate powers. And as Jefferson said, " ... if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."

Most Americans have missed "real education" so badly that they are not even aware of the idea of learning to be able to be citizens. In order to do this, the primary goal of public education in the US is supposed to be raising much more than a simple majority of the population to "be in and understand the important discourse of our time".

This is deeply serious stuff.


Back to mathematics. It is a plural because math is the process of being able to make and use maths to help "think and reckon".

I disagree with the math traditionalists for a variety of reasons -- including what they teach, how they teach, etc. This rarely even touches any kind of mathematical thinking. Seymour Papert, who was a very good mathematician, advocated inventing mathematics suited for children's minds that children could get deeply fluent in (for many reasons and in many ways), and that embodied and taught deep thinking in general.

I have similar feelings about why science is important in general 
education. In the large, science is humanity's best invention so far of 
how to "think better than our brains want to" (cf Francis Bacon, etc.) 
Its heuristics and processes are the most important ones for all of us 
to internalize because they help us make sense of the muddle our brains 
have created over the last 200,000 years. Its relationships to our ways 
of representing (maths are among the most powerful) help us sort out 
what it means when we make claims about us and our environment.

If we put this together with what citizens need to be able to do, and with what "real science" has brought us in new more powerful ways to think about important ideas, then what we should be pushing for is the inventions of ways for children to look at and do "real mathematics" and "real science" that result in "musicians of ideas" as better citizens and parents (and I'll be they will do OK finding work too).


Garfunkel and Mumford miss what is important here to an embarrassing depth, and I'm not sure that there is enough substance in what they do say to be worth criticizing further.

Best wishes,

Alan




>________________________________
>From: Steve Thomas <sthomas1 at gosargon.com>
>To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
>Cc: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>; iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 2:19 PM
>Subject: Re: [IAEP] food for thought...
>
>
>Alan,
>
>
>Okay, I'll bite, I can see how you believe the "standard curriculum" is way off, but what part of their proposed solution do you disagree with and where do you see as the preferred paths?"
>
>
>In particular in the article they state "Science and math were originally discovered together, and they are best learned together now." which I assume you agree with based on past writings.
>
>
>I can see how you might disagree that learning Latin has no value (I have learned a lot from attempting to learn smalltalk).
>
>
>My fear in what the authors suggest is that the "real world" problems will be like what I saw in 1902 textbook Algebra Text by Milne  which I found in an ice cream shop on Cape Cod (I only go to the best ice cream shoppes ;)  The book was filled with "real world" problems (and little visualizations or age appropriate concrete tasks/objects kids could relate to) for ex:
>
>
>I look forward to your response, the destruction of my existing beliefs and being freed to learn :)
>
>
>Stephen
>
>
>On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com> wrote:
>Hi Walter 
>>
>>
>>
>>As with a number of other issues in education, I strongly disagree with 
both of the main opposing sides. Both the standard curriculum, and these guys, are way off IMO.
>>
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Alan
>>
>>
>>
>>>________________________________
>>>From: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
>>>To: iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>>Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 9:47 AM
>>>Subject: [IAEP] food for thought...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/how-to-fix-our-math-education.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
>>>
>>>-walter
>>>
>>>-- 
>>>Walter Bender
>>>Sugar Labs
>>>http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
>
>
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