Word: math
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...Math...
...basic fallacy in new mathematics is that it fails to see why mathematics is taught at all. For the very few who intend to pursue mathematical philosophy as a career, new math is dandy. But for the vast majority, who learn math in order to deal with the arithmetical problems of life, new math is a hodgepodge of abstractions that range from the irrelevant to the absurd and merely interfere with the practical applications of mathematics...
...trouble with our newspapers, our schools, is that good things are cheapened, become cliches. Take Marx. Now we have all our Marxism in formulas like chemistry or math. All answers to all problems. But if you have a book by Salinger and a book by Marx you'll read Salinger. People forget that Marx really said things. About man, about contact between people, about a better society...
...Math is not only vital in a day of computers, automation, games theory, quality control and linear programming; it is now also a liberal art, a logic for solving social as well as scientific problems. How much more of it Americans might have is suggested in the new Cambridge Report, a manifesto by 25 top U.S. math users and teachers who hammered it out at Harvard. To lift the national logic level and stamp out mathematical illiteracy, these experts argue that sixth-graders can and should attain a competence "well above that of the general population today." For high school...
...main danger in new math is that it may get too rigid as it spreads more widely. Critics also worry about fads, such as "set theory," a broadly unifying pure math concept that children probably cannot handle at a worthwhile level. But no one is talking about going back to old math. U.S. mathematical literacy can no longer be considered, as Robert Davis puts it, "a matter of God and heredity...