Arthur Benjamin's Formula for Changing Math Education

[djcordeiro]

I don't know if this has already made the rounds, but in this clip Art Benjamin makes his case for changing math education in the US.

http://metroplexmathcircle.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/arthur-benjamins-formula-for-changing-math/

[PowerOfPi]

I partially agree with him. What he says is to take the focus off calculus and onto discrete math. I think that the math curriculum should not focus on a particular subject, but rather let the students try different topics in the wide range of mathematics. Every branch of mathematics is important and useful.

Another big point, that I didn't see him mention, is memorization versus understanding, formula versus methods, etc. As a student taking both high school and middle school math classes, as well as the son of two engineering professors, I can say that students in middle and high school are taught insufficient math and lots, including students of many subjects (because math is a foundation for many thing), are not able to take the leap between high school and college/university. This both the teachers' and students' fault, but more so the curriculum and textbooks used, who make math sound like memorization and computation, when it is really deep and creative thinking and problem solving. Mathematicians are not given a worksheet of problems and find theorems and identities, they think.

To fix this, we have to make the idea of "Calculus" not sound hard and cold. We have to make students really understand things rather than memorizing. For example, in one of my classes, we are given a sheet of formulas and theorems to use on tests and homework, while most students don't understand them and haven't seen them proved. To fix the problem, we have to introduce a new curriculum, such as the way AoPS books work, because they emphasize on the understanding, and show the formula once the student has understood it or derived it by himself/herself by answering questions and solving problems.

[dilberto]

we know him, he is nice, we went to dinner with him at Davidson in baltimore , and my mom went to school with him