Do you know?
In maths we’re taught algorithms, specific methods and measures.
If our teacher is any good, we’re also taught about how perspective influences the difficulty of a task, and how we can change our perspective (or our numbers) to make the task easier.
Now, the people who plan education, they know this. And they look at the methods and say, “Well getting the kids to understand that one costs X million bucks a year, and it’s not used later on in life by very many, anyway”.
See? They evaluate the cost/benefit ratio of each method or macromethod.
But a method doesn’t stand alone.
Maths isn’t its algorithms.
Maths is what we glimpse in between the algorithms… and learning enough of these rotes lets us intuit more and more of the real mathematic.
If we don’t know enough methods, we can’t know when and how to use the ones we do know.
And the planners don’t get this.
What do you think?