Re: Math education myth question

Robert Grumbine wrote:
In a different group, a poster declared that today's (US)
5th graders are expected to know all the mathematics that
humanity had discovered through 1600 (AD).

Now, this is wildly incorrect as to fact. It is _so_
wildly incorrect, that I suspect that this is a quotation
that is going around in some circles or other.

Given the knowledge of the bizarre that folks here have,
my failure to identify a better group (I looked into
misc.education.science, and found that was mostly Conrad
and Jabriol), and failure to come up with anything relevant
in google, I turn to the assembled multitudes here for
ideas on the origins of the myth, or whether I've sighted
the first telling.


Googling turned up the following FAQ on math
anxiety, which may or may not have some
relevance:

http://www.vismath.org/faq/manxfaq.html

It seems that there are some really strange
ideas out there about applying the `Sheldrake Principle'
in structuring school curricula, including maths.

Probably you will recall that Rupert Sheldrake was
a biologist (? I think, at least.) who championed
the notion of `morphic resonance.' He thought
that if you taught mice tricks in laboratories in
England, then mice in laboratories all over the world
learned the same tricks by means of this morphic
resonance phenomenon. Well Sheldrake had some
ideas on human education, too ;->

His principle apparently states that we learn things
best, by a process of resonance, if they are presented
to us in the historical order in which they were
discovered.

Now there's another fellow called Thompson, according
to this FAQ, who made up some scheme or other, which
divided up human progress in mathematics as follows:

* riverine, arithemetic, R (4000bc - 500bc)
* classical, geometric, G (500bc - 1689ad)
* modern, dynamic, D (1700 - 1970)
* biospheric, chaotic, X (from 1970 on)

It certainly seems very odd to place `modern, dynamic'
after 1700 ;->

But the divisions seem to coincide roughly with
the 1600 AD date that you mention.

There's also a proposed curriculum based on this
`Thompson Scheme':

* epipaleolithic (late stone age) to K, 1
* mesolithic and early neolithic (agriculture) to 2, 3
* riverine (first city states) to 4, 5 (ancient indus, sumer,
egypt)
* classical (greek, roman, etc) incl med to 6, 7, 8
* modern to 9,
* biospheric to 11, 12

But if one would change grade 5 to grade 6, and 1700 to
1600, then I suppose you could arrive at the statement
you've quoted. Or if someone looked into the `Thompson
Scheme' and compared it to some particular standard
math curriculum, they might come up with such a mapping.

But for sure, such a specific statement is unlikely to
be made spontaneously. There's some crazy theory
behind it.

Best,

David

.

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