What's Wrong

I should perhaps talk about problems in teaching rather than anything being wrong. I think 'what's wrong' would lead too far into the philosophy of right and wrong.

There several fundemental problems:

The ambient attitude toward mathematics that we live in. When I inform people that I am a mathematician, there follows:

"I always hated math."
"I was never any good at math."
"Just can't do math."
"I was good at math until I had a bad teacher in 7th Grade and got turned off."

This isn't everybody, of course. I try to avoid the universal quantifier. I remember going to an Urgent Care and the doctor was reading Strang's "Linear Algebra".

None the less, such instances are rare.

I listened to The Senate when they gave bigger grants to students that were going into mathematics and science or take a crucial foreign languages. (I wonder what those are.)

The Senate seems to believe that money is the universal nostrum.

I began graduate school before Sputnik went up. I recall that someone in the teacher's lounge remarked "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi." when a Vanguard blew up on the launch pad. I remember the day when the Russians were successful at orbiting their first spacecraft.

There followed a torrent of money into mathematics and science. Grant money was there for the asking. In universities mathematicians had two course loads. Before Sputnik the Mathematics Professors had leather patches on their elbows.

After Sputnik the number of mathematical journels grew as without bound. If you had a Ph.D. in mathematics, you had a good job. You could drop out for 5 or 10 years and come back to a job.

And the "New Math" was born. An injury from which mathematics education has never recovered.

(To be cont.)