What do you think of "A Mathematician's Lament"?

Very interesting ideas expressed in that article. I have often wondered why I bothered to learn algebra, as – despite many assurances to the contrary – I have never needed it in real life! I think what he’s proposing is a wonderful, but unrealistic idea…at least for public schools. It was really long, though, so don’t be too surprised if not many read it all the way through : )

Yeah, I confess I didn’t read the whole thing either. I put in about 15 good minutes on it, though, and scanned the rest. I got the gist of what he was saying, and thought it was brilliant. Hope to hear more reflections like yours on it – thanks Aug!

It was pretty interesting to me personally, because my 9th grader is in Algebra II, and my 8th grader is in Geometry. 9th grader loves math, 8th grader struggles with it.

This essay has been a huge influence on me, as has its author.

I agree with most of it. I think that the way we teach math has, in general, robbed us of some part of our natural inheritance as human beings, namely, the natural affinity for pattern and making order from disorder, which is the heart of mathematics.

I recommend it constantly.

Nice! Can you share with us more of what it was like to learn mathematics from the man? (I don’t even want to call it Math anymore!)

He was a colleague, actually. He and I both taught at the same K-12 school in Brooklyn for a couple of years, before I left to do my dissertation. He had been a professor, but decided he needed to get to kids younger, before the creativity was squeezed out of them.

I sat in on his class several times, and they were all memorable experiences. He tends to be a very human teacher—he shares his emotions with his students. He is always trying to teach people the art of asking good questions. He taught a third grade class where the only homework was to ask a question every day.

I’ve been wanting to make a documentary for some time about math, that would feature him in some respect. But I’m not back in New York anymore. If anyone wants an interesting film project, go in to his classrooms and videotape what goes on. Some of the most unique math classes you’ll ever see.

I’ll print the article and read it.