Mathematics is ‘horribly archaic’

Press, 11 June 1987, Page 16

Mathematics is ‘horribly archaic’

PA Wellington Much of the mathematics curriculum In Western countries is "horribly archaic,” according to two visiting American mathematicians, Professor Peter Hilton and Dr Jean Pedersen. The visitors are on a tour of New Zealand’s universities and have been talking to students, lecturers and some high school teachers. Dr Pedersen is a senior lecturer in mathematics at Santa Clara University in California and helped to establish a programme to encourage young women to study mathematics at university. Professor Hilton is professor of mathematics at New York State University and was the first vicepresident of the American Mathematical Association.

Both say mathematics should be more vivid, dynamic and exciting.

“A tremendous amount of time is devoted to the addition of fractions here,” Professor Hilton said.

“There is a small excuse for that in the United States because of our complicated measures and weights system, but there is no excuse for that in New Zealand, because you use a decimal system.

“There is no justification for teaching a subject just because it is hard.” More natural subjects were the addition of decimals, percentages and geometry of the threedimensional world students lived in.

It was also important to learn how to estimate answers as the exact multiplication of decimals was hardly ever used. “A large amount of time is devoted to teaching children to do what machines do much better than human beings. “This is routine, dull and uninteresting.”

Dr Pedersen said children should be encouraged to discuss mathematical problems among themselves.

“Let them think about it and discuss it between themselves so they have some questions about it,” she said.

“It is a terrible tragedy to have them not talking about a subject in the way they do about others. “It is always ‘You do your own work’.” The pair have written a text book for school pupils and adult students called “Fear No More” in an attempt to create new attitudes to mathematics and to help people to think mathematically

again. They are also concerned with teaching methods, and worried about the shortage of mathematics teachers throughout the world. Both believe teaching* must be made a more attractive profession in terms of salary and conditions.

“These are questions of society’s values,” Professor Hilton said.

“In the United States the role models are sports stars, television stars, and film stars.

Because teachers earn very little, the profession was not greatly respected, he said.