A Mathematician's Lament
How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
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4.6 • 28 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
“One of the best critiques of current K-12 mathematics education I have ever seen, written by a first-class research mathematician who elected to devote his teaching career to K-12 education.” —Keith Devlin, NPR’s “Math Guy”
A brilliant research mathematician reveals math to be a creative art form on par with painting, poetry, and sculpture, and rejects the standard anxiety-producing teaching methods used in most schools today. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart’s controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and parents alike, altering the way we think about math forever.
Paul Lockhart is the author of Arithmetic, Measurement, and A Mathematician’s Lament. He has taught mathematics at Brown University, University of California, Santa Cruz, and to K-12 level students at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like music or painting, says long-time math teacher (K-12 and college) Lockhart, mathematics is an art-"the art of explanation," "the music of reason"-and its method of instruction in American schools has reduced a "rich and fascinating adventure of the imagination... to a sterile set of facts to be memorized and procedures to be followed." With passionate reasoning, Lockhart unveils the creative, flexible, open-minded side of math; an early analogy casting music education in a math instruction model-students must study proper notation for years before attempting to, say, hum a tune-makes a brilliant introduction. Making a clear distinction between "facts and formulas" and "mathematics," Lockhart inspires a second look at received wisdom regarding math-that it's necessary to learn (do carpenters use trigonometry? Does anyone balance their checkbook without a calculator?), or that it has any direct connection to reality ("the glory of it is its complete irrelevance to our lives"). Though it features a thorough thrashing of current methods without suggesting how to fix the curriculum, Lockhart's slim volume (based on his widely-circulated essay) provides a fresh way of thinking about math, and education in general, that should inspire practical applications in the classroom and at home.
Customer Reviews
Excellent
This book is spot on.
It is amazing that we have any mathematicians given the current methods of academic torture known as math education.
Has any of these math educators or teachers ever done or understood a real seminal proof? My guess it is no and they view math class as some weed out method.
This whole community needs to be honest and reform math education. My math education in k-12 failed me.
I work as an applied mathematician and my public school classes did nothing to prepare me for this career and almost turned me against math.
Euclid is in league with the Devil?
Learning of math can be made more intuitive and creative, no doubt. Because he is a mathematician and I'm not, it would be quite arrogant of me to dismiss his criticisms out of hand.
However, he seems to go too far in his criticisms.
In the chapter "“High School Geometry: Instrument of the Devil” he criticizes the obtuseness of how geometry is presented in high school. He spares nothing in his critique. I found myself nodding my head in agreement. Then I remembered.
The proofs Lockhart criticizes are either directly or stylistically the proofs from Euclid's Elements.
Einstein is quoted as saying "If Euclid failed to kindle your youthful enthusiasm, then you were not born to be a scientific thinker." Lockhart is free to disagree with Einstein and criticize Euclid, but he should temper is views with more considered opinions.
a joyful little book
To some degree, is is a lament; but, it's pure reflection is an ode. In this celebration of mathematical activity, teachers are encouraged to cultivate higher-order thinking in their classrooms.
While I do not completely agree with every little snipe at public education, Lockhart delivers his core message with such passion and joy, the book becomes hard to put down. This would be a fantastic book for a group of educators to share and grapple with.