Math Education in the U.S.: Still Crazy After All These Years

Barry Garelick, via a kind email:

“Hell hath no fury like a mathematician whose child has been scorned by an education system that refuses to know better,” Barry Garelick wrote in his first published article on math education in 2005. He has been at it ever since, and his focus has remained the same: why many of today’s practices for teaching math are ineffective and often destructive.

Garelick states: “In writing these articles, I have often felt that I am explaining in detail why jumping out of an airplane without a parachute will result in death. And while I am heartened that my readers have found these articles useful, I am also disheartened when I hear the education establishment react with arguments that are tantamount to ‘Oh but if you jump out of an airplane the right way, you can survive.’ ”

Nevertheless there is a growing momentum in the U.S. against the well-intentioned but highly injurious nonsense that passes for math education. This collection of articles will assure those people who are convinced that it is being taught poorly that they are right.