Timeline for On the recent question "Is Euclid dead?", or: Is it considered good practice to use MathOverflow for a campaign?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
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| Dec 28, 2013 at 13:47 | comment | added | user9072 | @Did the first thing to decide is what is the purpose of teaching (math). This is pretty purely value-based. And a lot of subsequent discussions about 'details' depend on it. A certain tension (or perceived tension) around such things was implict in certain discussion on main on this question. | |
| Dec 26, 2013 at 23:12 | comment | added | Amir Asghari | @Did See, there was nothing wrong with that algorithm (and long division) in itself. The point is what you want from it, and when you want it. Here is where the values come into play. | |
| Dec 26, 2013 at 23:10 | comment | added | Amir Asghari | @Did according to which, my students could approximate the square root of a number by trial and error by rescaling an square without learning that algorithm. So far so good. Next meeting with parents, they came to me asking me why I didn't teach that algorithm. One of them said, my boy is going to be an engineer and without knowing how to find the square root of a number how he could become an engineer! I answered, at that time he know how to use a calculator. All my argument didn't convince them. And later on, I forced to teach that algorithm. | |
| Dec 26, 2013 at 22:59 | comment | added | Amir Asghari | @Did Sorry if I haven't tried to be more clear. Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time I was teacher. There was a very strange algorithm for finding square root of a number in the text book that I should teach. If you had more advanced concepts you could find some meaning behind that algorithm. But my students were just in middle school, and without those concepts, the algorithm remained just a meaningless set of rules. I decided not to go with the textbook's suggestion. Instead, I went a more conceptual approach (to be continued) | |
| Dec 26, 2013 at 17:36 | comment | added | Did | Sorry but I am feeling something like an excess of testosterone here... Anyway, you might want to explain which values long division is value-laden with. | |
| Dec 26, 2013 at 10:51 | comment | added | Amir Asghari | @Did Decide! Should we teach long division or not? If yes, how, if no, why? Just do it as a thought experiment! | |
| Dec 26, 2013 at 10:06 | comment | added | Did | "such decisions (what to teach, how to teach) are basically value-laden" Is this statement so obvious that it needs no explanation? At least some such decisions are not value-laden. | |
| Dec 21, 2013 at 18:43 | history | edited | Amir Asghari | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Make the answer more clear and more explicit.
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| Dec 21, 2013 at 13:25 | history | answered | Amir Asghari | CC BY-SA 3.0 |