Academic priorities 324

This is a really old argument and the answer is that there is no reason.

You can teach the basics and the buttisted systems at the same time.

Honestly, this is a very old and very solved problem.

The real problem is why we don't do that.

Well, I wasn't arguing that, I was merely stating that I only had the mechanics in some cases. You can't understand the mechanics without learning the more complex issues. Each are prerequisites for the other.

anyway.

I learned the shapes of words, how they sounded, and what they meant before I ever learned what the parts were, alphabet included.

In fact, I would argue that your example is particularly bad, because I think the majority of people learn to read by understanding the complex parts first.

I was a good reader at age 4 long before I understood the alphabet or grammar rules. By good, I mean I read the newspaper, encyclopedias, and magazines. I learned words by hearing them and seeing them, and did so without having any idea what the small parts were.

Or maybe they are not properly taught, because they are certainly teaching a lot of them. Even when I was growing up, it seemed that mechanics at the expensive of all else was their main idea.

In fact, I think around here they always went overboard on the mechanics at the expense of telling students what they meant.

Standardized tests scores are at an all time high, and they seem to be almost all mechanics, and yet we still have innumerate and illiterate students.

Every time I look at tests, they seem to be almost nothing but the mechanics, and rote regurgitation of facts.

Since these are often national standards, I buttumed it was like that everywhere.

I use the crutches *all* of the time, and find it *increases* my ability to make estimates. Your mileage obviously varies.

Of course, I'm probably wierd. I do a combination of head and buttisted math most of the time, and people who watch me can't figure out the rhyme or reason of it. I work through problems and a lot of times when I see a shortcut I'll do that one in my head. The calculator is a kind of cache-miss buttistance (brain-miss?).

For example, if you practice, you realise that something like 99*246 is really a simple subtraction problem: 24600-246.

I think most people always take the hard way, and so everything seems too difficult for them.

I used to worry about losing basic skills, but when I stopped using calculators for a period of time, my basic math skills went down, not up.

Now, typing is another story. At one point I was doing everything on a keyboard, and found that I could no longer write well. I started increasing the amount of handwritten logs and notes I made, and it fixed that particular problem. It also greatly eased up my carpel-tunnel and finger problems.

Another one is hand-evaluation of computer code. I've recently started doing a lot more of it in my head because since leaving college no one has required me to do code evaluations without a computer.

Suddenly one day you realize you've lost that edge.

Fortunately, it's easy to get it back (usually), and I try to spend at least a couple of hours a week on things I don't really have to do, but don't want to forget.

I think programming was the first thing that ever taught me to think. School before that was pretty well useless. I started programming in junior high, and it was the first time I had ever had to organize my thoughts.

I never thought of it that way though: it was simply a requirement of something I wanted to do, so I learned it without really dwelling on it.

Depends on what you mean by rigor. I've seen what was called "programming by rigor" and it sucked.

I think it is better to learn the rigor by doing things. It can be a natural thing, and happen almost without your realizing it.

I've had programming and math teachers that never mentioned anything like rigor, but still managed to teach us, often by simply setting standards on our results.

Maybe.

Floating point math comes to mind.

-- shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George S. Patton

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