“I never want to hear anyone say to my daughters ‘I’m not a math person’ or ‘my brain doesn’t think that way,’ because I believe these messages can reinforce the idea that you have to be born to be a math and science person. And that’s just not true.”https://m-gat.es/2jGMlhK
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Replying to @melindagates
The root problem is that the culture of mathematical investigation, like all cultures of artistic practice, can be transmitted only by its practitioners -- who perversely consider this desperately important work to be someone else's job. The contrast with music is dramatic.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @melindagates
As usual, misguided incentives are to blame. Mathematicians do not care about the teaching of mathematics, and do everything they can to avoid engaging in it, or even thinking seriously about it. They're not penalized for this; they're rewarded. So mathematics teaching suffers.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @melindagates
If mathematicians hold the teaching of mathematics in contempt, and care only for the practice of their art, then they hold still more in contempt those who choose to devote themselves to teaching. Teachers learn little from disdainful mathematicians.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @melindagates
So the mathematical knowledge of teachers is scant, and the schools of education do little or nothing to augment it. Lacking both mathematical knowledge and confidence, teachers impart to students a debased and fragmented picture of the subject -- along with an antipathy for it.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @melindagates
The pedagogical and mathematical incompetence of teachers leads to disastrous learning outcomes, which policy-makers then try to fix by "teacher-proofing the curriculum." But micromanaging classroom practice only further demoralizes the teacher corps, leading to high turnover.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @melindagates
Of course teaching mathematics is very subtle and demanding work, even for those who understand the subject minutely; learning the art of pedagogy is as hard as learning the art of mathematics. No: harder, because there are so few examples of first-rate practice to imitate.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @melindagates
So the teaching of mathematics is typically bedeviled by gross malpractice, and complete alienation from the subject occurs in most cases. From eighth grade onward, fifty percent of math students abandon the subject every year. Most adults boast of their hatred of mathematics.
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And the grim irony is that virtually none of these openly mathophobic adults has ever actually seen any mathematics. Even those who've spent twelve years of their lives chasing As and perfect test scores (and getting them) emerge from the ordeal with no idea what mathematics is.
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