“It is a student's understanding of mathematics, above all other subjects, which suffers most from unenlightened teaching methods. ...the troubles may well stem mainly from the first year or two of the child's encounter with numbers... if children come to fear them or to be bored with them, they will eventually join the ranks of the present majority... If, on the other hand, numbers are made a... source of adventure and exploration from the beginning, there is a good chance that the level of numeracy in society can be raised... There is a real role here for the history of mathematics—and the history of number in particular—for history emphasizes the diversity of approaches and methods which are possible and frees us from the straitjacket of contemporary fashions in mathematics education. It is, at the same time, interesting and stimulating in its own right.”
“Because of white racism's ability to bludgeon us into believing that we are inferior beings and therefore incapable of learning math and the sciences, we must spend a significant amount of our learnin...”
Mathematics education
“By the beginning of the seventeenth century we may say that the fundamental principles of arithmetic, algebra, theory of equations, and trigonometry had been laid down, and the outlines of the subject...”
Mathematics education
“All the modern higher mathematics is based on a calculus of operations, on laws of thought. All mathematics, from the first, was so in reality; but the evolvers of the modern higher calculus have know...”
Mathematics education
“The author holds that our school curricula, by stripping mathematics of its cultural content and leaving a bare skeleton of technicalities, have repelled many a fine mind. It is the aim of this book t...”
Mathematics education
“Although there is no study which presents so simple a beginning as that of geometry, there is none in which difficulties grow more rapidly as we proceed, and what may appear at first rather paradoxica...”
Mathematics education