Proposed changes in math don't add up
BY MIKE COHENMike Cohen, an assistant superintendent in the Amityville school district, taught math for 30 years.November 23, 2004We are the folks that everyone in high school hated - the ones who sat in the middle seat in the front row of every mathematics class. When asked for the value of pi, we immediately responded with the approximation 3.141592654, while our classmates snickered.We proudly proclaim our status as "math geeks." Someone once said that most teachers choose to teach a particular subject, but mathematics teachers receive a calling. Our passion for the power, for the beauty and for the perfection that we found in mathematics compelled us to pursue a career in which we could spread our passion to others.The sheer love of mathematics continues to energize us. What we discovered when we got in front of a classroom was that, with the exception of the present and future "math geeks" seated before us, the vast majority of those we taught could care less. Instead, we are bombarded with the eternal question, "When are we ever going to use this junk?" In most cases, we responded simply, "I don't know, but when you get to college, you'll find out!"Beginning in 1987, when the National Science Foundation ran a conference in Washington, D.C., on the improving of calculus instruction in America, a radical new idea took root - applying mathematics to the real world. For those of us in the trenches, this notion meant that we needed to retrain ourselves and, heaven forbid, learn that mathematics could be applied to all aspects of human endeavor.Fast forward to 2004. In the wake of the debacle surrounding the administration of the Mathematics A Regents in June 2003, state Education Commissioner Richard Mills asked Northport-East Northport Superintendent William Brosnan to head a committee to examine all aspects of the state's mathematics curriculum and testing program and to make specific recommendations. Well, the committee finished its well-meaning work and, to say the least, many in the mathematics community are not impressed.To put it simply, the end product seeks to take mathematics back to the days of mindless manipulation and drill and kill. If you read the 87-page document in its entirety, there are two words that you will not find: real world.What you will find is obscure geometric theorems that mathematicians don't even use and algebraic techniques that hand- held calculators carry out at the push of a button in a fraction of a second.For example, the proposed 10th-grade curriculum includes the following: "Show, justify and use the theorem that states that the point of concurrency of the medians of a triangle divides each median into segments whose lengths are in the ratio 1:2."Trust me when I tell you that not even the uber-math geek can find any applications for that chesnut.If that's not bad enough, the proposed changes require formal or informal proofs of approximately 20 additional geometric theorems. Math geeks like us love proving mathematical theorems, but any classroom veteran will tell you that the vast majority of 10-grade students hate the entire process. They simply lack the intellectual maturity to value the tediousness of this enterprise.We believe that there is both power and beauty in mathematics for its own sake, but there is even more power and beauty that derives from using mathematics to solve the kind of problems that people from all walks of life encounter every day. Shockingly, that power and beauty is sadly lacking in the proposed "improved" curriculum.In the current curriculum, students use mathematics to solve problems that arise in business, science and the social sciences. They use mathematics to model the "real world."A recent Mathematics B examination posed a question in which students were asked to use a mathematical model for the total annual profits of a clothing company projected over three years.Instead of graphing calculators, let's give the students slide rules, quill pens, parchment and candles to provide light when they do their homework.If you believe that the best way to move forward is to move backward, then you will love the "new" curriculum. No more applications of mathematics. Now, we will produce a new generation of mindless manipulators.
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