[Edu-sig] Summary/Overview re Math Reform (my agenda -- Urner)

[ajsiegel at optonline.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: Kirby Urner <urnerk at qwest.net>
Date: Monday, February 21, 2005 3:51 pm
Subject: [Edu-sig] Summary/Overview re Math Reform (my agenda -- Urner)

> 
> So I just started this thread on 'Calculus Mountain' on math-learn:
> http://www.mathforum.com/epigone/math-learn/slingsamwang

You're quite right AFAIAK.

For myself, when the mountain looked liked Calc2, followed by Calc3,Calc4,Calc5,Calc6 I simply traversed down and found a more interesting looking mountain - with respect to my own sensiblities.  Shame.

My friend Felix Klein was not fully prescient here.  Calc was just being   introduced into mainstream curriculum at the time of his writing, and though this was not something that he himself was activiely behind, he seemed to be comfortable enough with it.

> Basically, I'm arguing that we should evolve the computer science 
> track into
> an alternative numeracy track, skirting calculus mountain yet 
> providingplenty of useful mathematics.  
> 
> This track will co-exist with, and compete with, the current 
> precalc-calc
> track, which today monopolizes K-12 as the only gateway into 
> college level
> technology tracks and careers.


I've lost the trail of how it came to be that calc so thoroughly dominated math education once one gets past the fundamentals. But I am interested in that kind of thing and would like to pick up that trail.  

My own (out of fashion) sense, is that we will wondering one day how comp sci ed got bifurcated from math ed so suddenly, completely, dramatically and it appears - realistically - irreversibly.

Integrated math/ comp. sci did threaten to revolutionize the math tract.  I guess one theory: the revolution was averted by putting comp sci on its own tract.  

>From reaction here, it seems that technology folks in general are not uncomfortable with that solution.  But I keep thinking that is because  they rightly fear a comp sci track in the service to Calc1,Calc2,Calc3, Calc4,Calc5,Calc6 track, rather than one which leads a revolutionaized math track - developed with the computational power of the machine as a given.

Or somethinf to that effect.

Art