[Edu-sig] re: Switching gears

[Kirby Urner]

>I have lost passion for the argument, but do think it would
>be ruder not ot respond at all.
>
>Kirby, you know as well as I that Book I Prop I before
>Book I Porp II, and well before Book XI Prop I (where
>we first see solids) is at the very essence of Euclid.
>Not making Euclid sacred, but the deductive process
>does have some "sacredness" IMO.
>
>David Joyce's take at:
>
>http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html
>
>closely resembles my own.

I'm not sure what the argument is, but maybe it's that we 
shouldn't be jumping "out of sequence" vis-a-vis Euclid's
deductive structure.

I'm more a wholes->parts than a parts->wholes kinda guy.
Overview is a motivation for learning the nitty gritty 
details of a system.  So I'm not averse to at least naming 
polys before we get to them in a deductive apparatus, 
because experience is spatial, not flat, and no infinite
planes have ever been disclosed to the senses.

Anyway, I don't see having polys in 1st grade as getting
in the way of starting with some basic postulates and 
definitions later -- although in my class it's always 
emphatic that postulates are not "self evident", but are
more in the "cultural convention" or "convenient fiction"
category.

Given Euclid didn't have access to silicon chips, matrices, 
Python, POV-Ray, PyOpenGL etc., it makes sense that we'd 
have a little bit different approach some couple thousand 
years later.  A mix of the old and the new, not straight 
old, and not straight new, is my preferred blend.  

Kids born much later in time are confronted with an exponentially 
greater body of amassed human knowledge/experience.  In this 
day and age, it makes sense to MIRV the trajectories i.e.
cover more disparate disciplines within the scope of one 
topical-thread launch.  If you can learn your geometries in 
conjunction with TV production and/or computer programming, 
so much the better.  Life is short.

Kirby