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On Education
I was having a conversation with my aunt the other day about the way we count and the way we teach math. My aunt teaches fifth grade and she had recently gone to a workshop about teaching math. We got to talking about the rigidity in how we teach math in the US and how it is much more flexible than that, mostly focusing on different base systems and how we impose on kids base ten.
I have been thinking about it more since then and trying to simplify this problem we seem to have with education. I have narrowed it down to three words, "lack of creativity". We have taken the art out of education. You can see this in the selection of classes; classes like Art or Music tend to be under-emphasized because they can not be fit into a rigidly defined structure. Classes like Math and Science take up large parts of our curriculum even if we have no plan to use them later in life.
The problem is not lack of art or music classes. Even if we had these classes in equal amounts we would still have our math problem. What we need is more creativity across the board. There is often more than one way to solve a math problem and students should be allowed to use other methods to solve them. Science fairs and projects—things that encourage students to apply their knowledge in useful or creative ways—seem to have fallen out of favor. We need to tear down this destructive order we have set up around our creativity.
I have been thinking about it more since then and trying to simplify this problem we seem to have with education. I have narrowed it down to three words, "lack of creativity". We have taken the art out of education. You can see this in the selection of classes; classes like Art or Music tend to be under-emphasized because they can not be fit into a rigidly defined structure. Classes like Math and Science take up large parts of our curriculum even if we have no plan to use them later in life.
The problem is not lack of art or music classes. Even if we had these classes in equal amounts we would still have our math problem. What we need is more creativity across the board. There is often more than one way to solve a math problem and students should be allowed to use other methods to solve them. Science fairs and projects—things that encourage students to apply their knowledge in useful or creative ways—seem to have fallen out of favor. We need to tear down this destructive order we have set up around our creativity.