"High School Geometry: Instrument of the Devil"
I have been reading "A mathematician's lament" (link is to a PDF file). This is a 25-page invective from 2002 against current maths teaching (in the US, but I think it's probably generalisable), and is a plea for more creativity and problem-solving, and for less rote learning in maths education (a short commentary with context is here).
The title of this post is the heading of one of the sections. I passed high school maths on the strength of decent algebra performance (I consistently got 10-20% for the geometry section, because I simply couldn't bring myself to care about it). So the heading struck a chord.
Here's a little excerpt from the section itself:
"The student-victim is first stunned and paralyzed by an onslaught of pointless definitions, propositions, and notations, and is then slowly and painstakingly weaned away from any natural curiosity or intuition about shapes and their patterns by a systematic indoctrination into the stilted language and artificial format of so-called “formal geometric proof.”
All metaphor aside, geometry class is by far the most mentally and emotionally destructive component of the entire K-12 mathematics curriculum. Other math courses may hide the beautiful bird, or put it in a cage, but in geometry class it is openly and cruelly tortured."
The title of this post is the heading of one of the sections. I passed high school maths on the strength of decent algebra performance (I consistently got 10-20% for the geometry section, because I simply couldn't bring myself to care about it). So the heading struck a chord.
Here's a little excerpt from the section itself:
"The student-victim is first stunned and paralyzed by an onslaught of pointless definitions, propositions, and notations, and is then slowly and painstakingly weaned away from any natural curiosity or intuition about shapes and their patterns by a systematic indoctrination into the stilted language and artificial format of so-called “formal geometric proof.”
All metaphor aside, geometry class is by far the most mentally and emotionally destructive component of the entire K-12 mathematics curriculum. Other math courses may hide the beautiful bird, or put it in a cage, but in geometry class it is openly and cruelly tortured."