He starts out strongly, with a nightmare in which he dreams about what music education would look like if schools took the bloodless approach they take to math. Unfortunately, after that he gets carried away and settles into a long rant over the schools' excessive interest in math as useful tool, and insufficient appreciation for math as art. For example,
"Anyway, the point is not whether mathematics has any practical value--I don't care if it does or not...Math requires no pathetic industrial or technological excuses."
It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the overall thrust. Most of the math I saw in school, and which I note from observing my children's courses, was indeed a sort of intellectual-free zone that emphasized formulas and manipulation at the expense of ideas and imagination. I probably would have enjoyed having Lockhart as a substitute teacher, but most students aren't math nerds and I think Lockhart either doesn't realize that, or he's such an idealist he thinks the right teacher can fundamentally change people. He also overlooks the fact that it would be hard to hire teachers who could teach math the way he thinks it should be taught. (And of the few you could find, half might quit in disgust the twentieth time a helicopter parent hassled them over "arbitrary" grading--less of a problem in today's mechanistic one-right-answer kind of school math!)
At least he ends strongly, with some neat thinking problems suitable for kids.
"Anyway, the point is not whether mathematics has any practical value--I don't care if it does or not...Math requires no pathetic industrial or technological excuses."
It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the overall thrust. Most of the math I saw in school, and which I note from observing my children's courses, was indeed a sort of intellectual-free zone that emphasized formulas and manipulation at the expense of ideas and imagination. I probably would have enjoyed having Lockhart as a substitute teacher, but most students aren't math nerds and I think Lockhart either doesn't realize that, or he's such an idealist he thinks the right teacher can fundamentally change people. He also overlooks the fact that it would be hard to hire teachers who could teach math the way he thinks it should be taught. (And of the few you could find, half might quit in disgust the twentieth time a helicopter parent hassled them over "arbitrary" grading--less of a problem in today's mechanistic one-right-answer kind of school math!)
At least he ends strongly, with some neat thinking problems suitable for kids.
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