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Education

In reply to the discussion: Why Do Americans Stink at Math? [View all]

xocet

(3,870 posts)
5. Here is a lecture "On teaching mathematics" that you might find interesting...
Tue Jul 29, 2014, 03:54 AM
Jul 2014

It is a challenging lecture, but it makes several good and intriguing points:

On teaching mathematics
by V.I. Arnold

Mathematics is a part of physics. Physics is an experimental science, a part of natural science. Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap.

The Jacobi identity (which forces the heights of a triangle to cross at one point) is an experimental fact in the same way as that the Earth is round (that is, homeomorphic to a ball). But it can be discovered with less expense.

In the middle of the twentieth century it was attempted to divide physics and mathematics. The consequences turned out to be catastrophic. Whole generations of mathematicians grew up without knowing half of their science and, of course, in total ignorance of any other sciences. They first began teaching their ugly scholastic pseudo-mathematics to their students, then to schoolchildren (forgetting Hardy's warning that ugly mathematics has no permanent place under the Sun).

Since scholastic mathematics that is cut off from physics is fit neither for teaching nor for application in any other science, the result was the universal hate towards mathematicians - both on the part of the poor schoolchildren (some of whom in the meantime became ministers) and of the users.

...

http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html
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