(Untitled)

[mothwentbad]

Some talk about math education, and then some more of the same.

The first link also contains in the comments some debate over the value of why vs how in mathematics. I'm pro-why. The second is an offshoot of the first, and centers on an article about how math is misunderstood and why. Though the article suffers from the uniqueness fallacy. Take a

Comments

[ellisbell]

Every mother's baby is the prettiest one there ever was.

[mothwentbad]

Perhaps. You'll let me know, though?

[jerseydevil77]

some of us have disciplines that aren't even taught until college. and as for the contextualization, history rarely does that either. you just don't notice because the stories the historians tell are interesting enough, so you don't think about who writes the history, what sources they use, etc... at least in high school.

[mothwentbad]

I don't know. Usually they're pretty boring by the time they get to the classroom.

[mothwentbad]

I guess the big problem is they mythologize our history, and then give a condescending respect to those mysterious other people who we all know deep inside just wish they could be us, but their little fishy windsocks are still pretty cool. Eh.

[jerseydevil77]

right, that's what you get in high school. i took a historiography course here in grad school that was great, we learned about who was writing history, why they wrote it different ways at different times etc... very informative.