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Estonian Schools To Teach Computer-Based Math

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-math dept.

First time accepted submitter Ben Rooney writes "Children in the Baltic state of Estonia will learn statistics based less on computation and doing math by hand and more on framing and interpreting problems, and thinking about validation and strategy. From the article: 'Jon McLoone is Content Director for computerbasedmath.org, a project to redefine school math education assuming the use of computers. The company announced a deal Monday with the Estonian Education ministry to trial a self-contained statistics program replacing the more traditional curriculum. “We are re-thinking computer education with the assumption that computers are the tools for computation,” said Mr. McLoone. “Schools are still focused on teaching hand calculating. Computation used to be the bottleneck. The hard part was solving the equations, so that was the skill you had to teach. These days that is the bit that computers can do. What computers can’t do is set up the problem, interpret the problem, think about validation and strategy. That is what we should be teaching and spending less time teaching children to be poor computers rather than good mathematicians.”'"

5 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. About time... by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is about time that schools embraced calculators and computers when it comes to math. When it comes to having a competitive edge and actually DOING something with math, the question isn't if you can do 123123.12 x 213123 / 23423.28 in your head, it is about learning to apply mathematical principles in the real world. You quite simply cannot get a job simply because you are good at doing addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. 100 years ago before the advent of the computer that might be true. Today though? Everyone has a calculator on them nearly all the time. The question is not if you can accurately calculate how much that $7.99 shirt is going to be if it is taxed at 7%, but how to plug in the numbers for that. The question isn't manually computing how to do a PageRank algorithm, but understanding the logic behind that (and improving it!).

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:About time... by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yep. Looking back at my elementary school/middle school years that rang especially true. I'm not -that- old (graduated HS in 2008) but the stuff I learned was already obsolete by the time I learned it.

      For example, in Kindergarten I learned print handwriting. In first grade I learned D'Nealian (basically a bastardized version of cursive, not quite print and not quite cursive) by third grade teachers required that everything should be written in cursive. The idea was that somehow, despite the fact that computers were everywhere and few people actually used cursive that it was a required skill to learn and that we'd be using it the rest of our lives. Wrong. Aside from a time from 3rd to 5th grade when teachers required it, I never used cursive, it was really a waste of time.

      There's a whole host of useless things I learned, each with a rationale that we'd be using this "skill" the rest of our lives. Which might be true if I lived in 1950, but I don't. I remember at some point we were forced to keep a pen-and-paper agenda and my request to use my PDA to keep track of things (I mean, nothing fancy just my dad's hand-me-down monochrome Palm Pilot) and that request was flatly denied. There were all sorts of things that I could have been (and should have been!) taught in elementary/middle school, things like computer programming, basic electronics, etc. but those were overshadowed by much more "important" things such as learning to write in cursive...

      I'm glad to see this mentality that calculators don't exist banished from classrooms.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  2. Re:Up to the parents now, as it used to be. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1. When's the last time you were more than 10 feet from a computer? How often do you think it's going to be in the next generation.
    2. I'd rather have graduates who can do calculus with a computer, than those that can fuddle and almost do Alegbra without. That may be the choice we have to make.
    3. Do you seriously think they're going to teach by saying "the computer always solves any problem", without broaching the mechanics at all?

  3. Re:Both! by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Aside when I sleep I've got a calculator on me at all times. My phone? A calculator. My laptop? A calculator. My iPod? A calculator.

    And yes, there's a reason why China is behind the US in terms of math, because, like you said a lot of the value is placed on rote memorization, but that is also the reason why China has lagged behind the US in terms of real innovation.

    Oh, and good luck getting a calculator to tell you what went wrong when a number you get isn't right.

    Except this is what Estonia is having students learn: what the numbers really mean and how to use them. Which is a more useful skill, to be able to compute the A^2+B^2=C^2 your head or to be able to recognize a right triangle when you see one and be able to use that formula to find out useful information?

    What most education systems are doing is teaching kids to memorize formulas and be able to do them with pencil and paper (or in their head) but not telling them when to use it or what the numbers really mean. You can ask most students what the Pythagorean theorem is and they can tell you, but how many of them can actually practically use it?

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  4. Re:Up to the parents now, as it used to be. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sentence 1 of your reply has no relationship to sentence 2, so I'm going to argue against what I imagine your point to be. This might be pointless:

    If they aren't doing algebra, its going because they're stuck algorithmic bullshit like memorizing the quadratic equation, then they'll never make it to calculus, which was exactly my point.

    No one needs to waste time learning to do square-roots by hand. No one needs to memorize multiplication tables. No one needs spend a ton of time on the algorithmic execution of concepts in math, except those developing re-usable algorithms to that effect(mathematicians and programmers). I can't remember the last time I did long-division by hand(except of course, of polynomials, but that hardly counts). Either precision matters little enough that I can approximate, or precision and accuracy matter enough that I wouldn't want anything but a computer to do it.