math and us

I found a new blog to absorb.  It's by a math teacher. I watched his talk on TED

and went to his blog and have been there on and off for about 4 hours.

Here's the post (of many I could choose) that I think is for me now

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=5781

and an excerpt; for algebra, substitute reading, grammar, literature, composition, spelling, etc.

3. This kind of algebra makes our students dumb, unimaginative, and scared of real problems. At the end of the model lesson, the coach put up our homework, which was a carbon copy of the original problem, new numbers swapped in for the old. ¶ I can't describe my contempt for this arrangement. ¶ This is how we make kids stupid and impatient with irresolution, eager for contrived problems that look just like the last contrived problem, completely lost if we so much as switch around the order of a few words. "We don't teach them problem solving skills anymore," my department head said to me. "We teach them problem types."

Algebra teachers sell students a cheap distortion of the real world while insisting at the same time that it really is the real world. The cognitive dissonance is obvious and terrible. Students know the difference. It cheapens my relationship to them and their relationship to mathematics when you ask me to lie to them.

It's like offering someone lust or manipulation while insisting that it's love. Not only are the short-term consequences devastating but it makes that person distrustful or wary of the real thing. Make no mistake. We are making an alien of algebra. We are doing real damage here.

This kind of thinking will change what I do and how I do it even more.