Friday, December 31, 2010

Education

Today I'm adding another link from TED.com. For the record, I remembered that I wanted to write about this before I remembered that it was a TED.com video too.  I do have more sources.

In this talk, Arthur Benjamin suggests a completely new strategy for changing our country's math education. It's a fact that the United States is falling behind other developed nations in math and science scores on standardized tests. While I disagree with standardized testing to some extent, it does reveal some truth. Also, it's no secret that the United States is cutting funding on the Arts in schools and I think that the competitve nature of our education system is suppressing the creative side of our students' brains.  While this is a topic that I want to discuss more in the future, I find it interesting that of the two hemispheres of our brain, our education system has spent much more time and money developing the left side because it's easier to teach, despite which, we, as a country, are failing to produce math and science professionals, all in the process of killing our students' creativity and imagination.

Benjamin proposes that calculus should not be the pinnacle of our secondary math curriculum. Not that calculus should be abandoned, but that it should be left for post-secondary education. He suggests that statistics should be the pinnacle for every student who finishes high school, which is knowledge that is directly applicable to the digital age and invaluable for any person that handles money.







1 comment:

  1. Have you looked into International Baccalaureate schools at all? Those might (maybe) please you a bit. It is a big-time trend right now, and it cultivates a much more holistic child.

    ReplyDelete