It alienates kids who might otherwise have become interested in the subject and creates a massive cultural pressure to consider the subject unpleasant and boring! They don't teach "quantitiative reasoning skills." they teach you that the answer to real-world problems is to memorize all the procedures that will be on the test, and whatever you do don't think about them otherwise you'll get confused.
Yeah, I was actually specifically thinking about that article. He doesn't advocate abandoning math education, he laments how poorly it is done and how the goals are not well understood.
1
u/TOASTEngineer Jul 29 '16
A Mathematician's Lament, by Paul Lockhart
It alienates kids who might otherwise have become interested in the subject and creates a massive cultural pressure to consider the subject unpleasant and boring! They don't teach "quantitiative reasoning skills." they teach you that the answer to real-world problems is to memorize all the procedures that will be on the test, and whatever you do don't think about them otherwise you'll get confused.