A Mathematician's Lament

A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form by Paul Lockhart

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This book was published in 2009 and the original material came from something created in 2002. It seems many of the ideas supported by the author have been put into practice under the description of Discovery Math. How's that working out for parents and students?

Parents are less than impressed their children are making their way through k-12 with no ability to add, subtract, multiply or divide.

Children, you would think, would be more than happy with this laissez-faire state of things but it would seem, from the reports of parents whose offspring are part of the program, such is not the case. The children are horribly frustrated and convinced they're not good at math and what's more, hate it. This was precisely what the author hoped to avoid and believed was happening in the old system.

The author believes one needs to face frustration in order to come to enjoy math. Well kids today are certainly frustrated. Some don't have the faintest idea what's happening while others, whose parents have sat them down and taught some basics, cannot comprehend why a simple question such as what is 6 + 2 requires an explanation of possibly three methods by which the answer can be derived when they know perfectly well it is 8. Even worse, if they simply write 6 + 2 = 8 they don't get marks while someone who comes up with processes, but never obtains the answer 8 does. To them it seems patently unfair and it is. However, what is desired in the education system of today is creativity at the expense of tools and techniques.

Fine. How about we take today's kids, give them a pile of rocks and see if they can creatively invent a wheel. Or how about this, we'll take a bunch, strip them naked, and leave them alone in the woods to creatively learn to survive. Oh darn, a bear just ate Johnny. Oh well, at least the bear creatively broadened the spectrum of its dietary selections. People spent millennia developing the tools and techniques of modern math and to take that away from students, particularly early learners, is criminal. Sure, every now and then toss them a problem a little beyond their capabilities and let them stretch a bit, but don't leave off teaching the basics.

How are these creative students devoid of math knowledge going to fare when they graduate and have to enter a business? And here we come to the crux of the matter. The author despises business and balance sheets. All these things are beneath him. But here it becomes interesting. Paul Lockhart is a teacher in the k-12 system. He gets paid by taxpayers and those taxpayers are able to pay the taxes which keep him in lattes by working at businesses and paying attention to the balance sheets. I'm becoming rather tired of left-wing hypocrites who bemoan all crass commercialism and then live off it. Hey Paul, how about tossing aside your cell phone, stripping off all your commercially made clothing, and entering the woods in winter to give yourself the opportunity of creatively surviving in difficult conditions. We'll see how well that works for you.

In short, this book is drivel from cover to cover and I do NOT recommend anyone waste his or her time on it.



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