The Taos
Discussion
Monday, September 12, 2005
Renewal of mathematics and computer science curriculum
“The hypothesis
that is developed, in the first five chapters, is that slow and generally
un-insightful instruction during the pre-college experience leads to a learned
disability. Whereas earlier in life,
the learner had the potential for understanding the fundamental procedures of
arithmetic, this potential is now inhibited, at the time of the college freshman
year, by an adaptation. “ Chapter Six, A Question of
Access” Prueitt, on line at {*}
The adaptation is reinforced by a well-entrenched social philosophy that legitimizes, improperly, the notion that mathematicians are somehow superior intellects.
In the case of the computer scientists in the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics at NMHU, several individuals have established an arrogant position that the freshman mathematics and computer science classes should be outsourced to the community college. Because of a series of newspaper articles written by the Chairman of the Department last year, he was fired in May 2004. An interview made last week records a mathematics faculty member, a full professor, saying that he is in fear for his job if he was to support the person fired or to speak out in any way.
These actions, the actions of the computer scientists and the firing of the mathematician who was the Chair, have taken to an extreme the behaviors of mathematics departments around the nation. In addition to the crisis caused by poor teaching in the schools, the computer science departments have become a training ground for computer programmers that have developed a parasitic community not having any grounding in a scholarly field of study.
The problem with computer science is complex, and has exasperated the crisis in mathematics education. This crisis has become entrenched. The history of this crisis has been long with the underlying causes being beyond the capability of our social discourse. As a result most mathematics education professionals today will say when asked, that most students do not have the actually ability to learn college algebra.
The theory I have developed agrees with this assessment. The surprise is that this inability to learn is not natural but acquired. It is acquired from the long and very poor training, almost completely using rote memory, that the schools and book companies have standardized.