schoolyard subversion

2001-02-14 [< * >]

Challenging Questions

Readers of this site know the value of questioning assumptions. Edge.org recently ran a series on Questions That Have Disappeared. Some of them were about education, and quite interesting, so I repeat them here with my comments.

Why teach mathematics?

Some questions are so rarely asked that we are astonished anyone would ask them at all. The entire world seems to agree that knowing mathematics is the key to something important, they just forget what.

Benjamin Franklin asked this question in 1749 while thinking about what American schools should be like and concluded that only practical mathematics should be taught. The famous mathematician G. H. Hardy asked this question ("A Mathematician's Apology") and concluded that while he loved the beauty of mathematics there was no real point teaching it to children.

Today, we worry about the Koreans and Lithuanians doing better than us in math tests and every "education president" asserts that we will raise math scores, but no one asks why this matters. Vague utterances about how math teaches reasoning belie the fact that mathematicians do not do everyday reasoning particularly better than anyone else.

To anyone who reads this and still is skeptical, I ask, What is the quadratic formula? You learned it in ninth grade, you couldn't graduate from high school without it. When was the last time you used it? What was the point of learning it?

ROGER SCHANK is the Chairman and Chief Technology Officer for Cognitive Arts and has been the Director of the Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University since its founding in 1989. One of the world's leading Artificial Intelligence researchers, he is books include: Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Learning in Computers and People , Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory, The Connoisseur's Guide to the Mind, and Engines for Education.

While I love math, I hate the way it is taught and so I have to agree with this. Perhaps if we taught students the underlying beauty of number, or the logic of life, the class would be worthwhile. However, as it is taugh now, mathematics is just Yet Another Stupid Thing that must be learned.

How do people differ in the ways they think and learn?

Most Americans, even (or, perhaps, especially) educated Americans, seem to believe that all people are basically the same -- we have the same innate abilities and capacities, and only hard work and luck separates those who are highly skilled from those who are not. But this idea is highly implausible. People differ along every other dimension, from the size of their stomachs and shoes to the length of their toes and tibias. They even differ in the sizes of their brains. So, why shouldn't they also differ in their abilities and capacities? Of course, the answer is that they do. It's time to acknowledge this fact and take advantage of it.

...

All of this implies that methods of teaching in the 21st Century will be tightly tied to research in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. At present, the study of individual differences is almost entirely divorced from research on general mechanisms. Even if this is remedied, it's going to be a challenge to penetrate the educational establishment and have this information put to use. So, the smart move will probably be to do an end-run around this establishment, using computers to tutor children individually outside of school. This in turn raises the specter of another kind of Digital Divide. Some of us may in fact still get off-the-rack education.

Finally, I'll leave aside another set of questions no one seems to be seriously asking: What should be taught? And should the same material be taught to everyone? You can imagine why this second question isn't being asked, but it's high time we seriously considered making the curriculum relevant for the 21st Century.

STEPHEN M. KOSSLYN, a full professor of psychology at Harvard at age 34, is a researcher focusing primarily on the nature of visual mental imagery. His books include Image and Mind, Ghosts in the Mind's Machine, Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience, Image and Brain: The Resolution of the Imagery Debate, and Psychology: The Brain, the Person, the World

Again, a hard-hitting question. How can our one-size-fits-all educational system work when it is clear everyone thinks differently and has different capabilities. Our system is not designed to accept anyone who is "different" than the norm, and thus rejects such people and stamps them with a mark of "dropout" that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

And the sad thing is, rather than educating people, we are churning out a society of look-alike, think-alike, act-alike robots. Our small hope, the randomness of genetics and society, is slowly being removed as greater and greater forces are being mobilized against those who do not fit in the system, and thus are best suited to improve it.

Perhaps it is time to admit that school doesn't educate kids, nor does it merely harm them. Instead, it destroys them, tearing out their soul and forcing them through a vestigal assembly-line process from the Industrial Age.

The first step to fixing this problem is admitting it, and this means believing that it's all right for students not to meet society's standards. In fact, this should be encouraged. The more different, the more random, and the more out-of-line people are -- the better. Perhaps then, we'll have some people creative enough to fix things for us.

Subscribe!

Like this entry? Subscribe to receive future updates by email: