“The usual courses in mathematics are... deceptive in a basic respect. They give an organized logical presentation which leaves the impression that mathematicians go from theorem to theorem almost naturally, that mathematicians can master almost any difficulty, and that subjects are completely thrashed out and settled. The succession of theorems overwhelms the student... The history, by contrast, teaches us the development of a subject is made bit by bit with results coming from various directions. We learn, too, that often decades and even hundreds of years of effort were required before significant steps could be made. In place of the impression that subjects are completely thrashed out one finds that what is attained is often but a start, that many gaps have to be filled, or that the really important extensions remain to be created.”
“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