An A-Maze-ing Approach To Math
3/25/2005 1:32:00 PM
By Barry Garelick
I am not a mathematics teacher, but I have a degree in mathematics and an intense interest in how the subject is taught. When I retire, I would like to teach math, which is why I started tutoring high school students in my spare time three years ago. My first student was a 9th grader having difficulty with geometry. He stated his problem succinctly: "I don't know how to do proofs." Confronted with what I thought could be a common problem, I was still unaware that what I was really seeing was a national crisis in mathematics education.
I looked through his textbook, one of whose authors was a recent president of NCTM, and I was surprised to find very few proofs of anything. More troubling, most theorems in the book were stated as postulates-that is, propositions stated without proof-and students were told to memorize them. The problems at the end of the chapter required students to do only a few simple proofs.
In a world where it doesn't matter when you learn something, because you'll get it eventually, there seem to be few if any critical junctures, no mastery of procedure, no building on what you've learned-no learning...
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