I think that starting kids earlier would be a massive improvement. A kid's first exposure to any interesting subject shouldn't have to be a college level course. Would we teach math that way?
Teaching programming in grade school would be so much better. If kids are 10+ years away from hitting the job market, in an area where technology turns over every 5 years, then we don't have to pretend that we're teaching them a job skill. This gives teachers the freedom to teach things within their own limited skill sets, and to have fun with it.
We don't completely ignore math until high school, suddenly say "so there are these things called numbers," expect to get along to algebra in one semester, and then throw our hands up in the air when that doesn't work out.
At first they are. This is different than the way I learned math as a kid. Today (at least at the elementary school that my kids attended), math starts out with relatively undifferentiated exploration, and hops around from one topic to another. It gains rigor more gradually.
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I think that starting kids earlier would be a massive improvement. A kid's first exposure to any interesting subject shouldn't have to be a college level course. Would we teach math that way?
Teaching programming in grade school would be so much better. If kids are 10+ years away from hitting the job market, in an area where technology turns over every 5 years, then we don't have to pretend that we're teaching them a job skill. This gives teachers the freedom to teach things within their own limited skill sets, and to have fun with it.
University was when the fun math started for me. :)
I don't get it. We do teach math that way (unless you think that all math classes are just blobs of an undifferentiated "math" whole).
We don't completely ignore math until high school, suddenly say "so there are these things called numbers," expect to get along to algebra in one semester, and then throw our hands up in the air when that doesn't work out.
At first they are. This is different than the way I learned math as a kid. Today (at least at the elementary school that my kids attended), math starts out with relatively undifferentiated exploration, and hops around from one topic to another. It gains rigor more gradually.