Should Students be taught Math

http://plus.maths.org

I think it is a British website.

Should students even be taught? At the risk of waxing serious, I think teachers should be guides who supply learners with the necessary tools to do their own explorations and make their own discoveries, while letting them know what has gone before so as to prevent them wasting their time reinventing the wheel. Better yet is when teachers and learners explore and discover together, rather than teachers pumping pre-selected data into students' heads, which must be memorized and regurgitated on exam papers in order to fulfil the requirements for a slip of paper called a diploma.

I agree, in general. But not all of us can be creative, math-wise, like for instance Brandon.

I'm in language education, not math(s), so I'm not sure how much of what I said applies in other fields. It might, though, seeing as how math(s) in particular is/are subject to peer review. It might even be more applicable to math and science than language.

Being largely uneducated formally, I must defer. But I can tie my shoes several ways and chew gum after a nice walk.

I'd like to see a way to evaluate the informally educated for their skills set, rather than make a judgement based on whether or not they jumped through enough hoops to get a piece of paper.

I have my moments, in both directions.

As do we all. Last night, a repair job of mine flooded the bathroom.

Lefty loosey, righty tighty.

Heh heh. I just neglected to use thread tape, assumed everything was hunky dory and found out later that it wasn't. No biggie, though. The bathrooms here have drains in the floor. I just waded over and unplugged it. Last time, though, the water had already spilled over the threshold before I discovered there was a problem.

When they introduced thread tape, I wanted to keep using the paste in a bottle. But nobody I knew cooperated with me. I always had the tape, never the other stuff. But, I had to admit at last: tape is better.

I had doubts about it, too, at first. But after using it a few times and getting a good seal the first time every time, I was sold. Before that, I always just figured on taking 2 or three tries to get it right. Or just getting somebody who was better at it to do it, which was always my first choice.

Even though I was a maintenance man, I had clumsy fingers and at first the tape was hard to get in place. Oversize fingers. Now, it's second nature.