RE: [seul-edu] Math teachers...

[Chris Hedemark <hedemark@bops.com>]

Let's back up here a moment.  What I am about to say is going to challenge
what most of you may take for granted.  But hopefully you're open minded to
consider the ramifications of it objectively.

What is the purpose of school?

How is that purpose best served?

Teaching pure math has its place.  But the end test of whether or not
teachers have done right by there students is when students go into the real
world and have to face practical applications of what they've learned in
school.  What good has school done me if I've gotten to Trig 2 but don't
know how to amortize a mortgage?

Teaching the pure skills is something that math teachers will always have to
do.  But teaching practical applications of skills, even basic skills, is
something that should always happen through all levels of education.

Chris Hedemark
System Administrator
Billions of Operations Per Second, Inc.
6340 Quadrangle Drive, Suite 210
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
email: hedemark@bops.com <mailto:hedemark@bops.com>
"It is better to be criticized by a wise person than to be praised by a
fool!" - Ecclesiastes 7 


-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Olszewski [mailto:ray@comarre.com]
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 2:23 PM
To: seul-edu@seul.org; 'seul-edu@seul.org'
Subject: RE: [seul-edu] Math teachers...


At 08:17 AM 7/21/00 -0400, Chris Hedemark wrote:
>Individual skills run through simulators can be a lot of fun.  Back in high
>school we did a stock market simulation.  Everyone started out with some
>funny money and was allowed to use it to participate in any of the
>securities covered in the Wall Street Journal and/or NYT.  Since real life
>daytraders do most of their work through a PC, it can be a reasonable
>facsimile of real life.
>...

No doubt these things are "a lot of fun" and sometimes "a reasonable
facsimile of real life". The question Doug raised, though (at least by
implication), is what *math* skills they teach. Your example, and the
simulations Chris mentioned, seem mostly to teach 4-function arithmetic,
percentages, weighted averages, and other grade-school-level math content,
not what I think of as high-school math (algebra, geometry, trig, calculus
... or am I out of date?).

I had originally started to reply to Chris' first posting with a response
about availability of spreadsheet software, Mathematica, and other serious
tools for doing mathematics. His listing of what the math department
actually used stopped me (as well as prompting me to verify that he really
was at a high school, not a junior high). 


--
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA           	 	         ray@comarre.com        
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