Professor Wu's Analysis
of the Mathematics Reform Movement
Notices of the American Mathematical Society
December, 1996
Professor Hung-Hsi Wu, of UC Berkeley, wrote a penetrating article
entitled, The Mathematician and the Mathematics Education Reform
in the December, 1996, AMS Notices. Here are some excerpts:
On the Overemphasis of Technology in the Reform Movement ...
... heuristic arguments based on appeals to technology are made with
increasing frequency: the computer or calculator begins to assume the
role of arbiter of pure reason.
On the Importance of Basic Skills ...
... when there is no simultaneous emphasis on basic technical skills
throughout the [NCTM Standards] ...[it] open[s] the door to texts and
curricula which make believe that one can be technically deficient ...
and still achieve conceptual understandings, make multiple connections,
and solve problems.
...formulas seem to have fallen into disgrace. In the reform curriculum
this is a severe case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
By sending out a signal that being weak in algebra is acceptable in
calculus, the reform in effect sanctions the continued decline in school
students' symbolic manipulative skill, especially when this signal is
reinforced by [the Harvard Calculus text], at present a bestseller in
calculus. The devastating impact this has on school mathematics education
as a whole will be long lasting, because the students of today will be
the teachers of tomorrow and weak teachers tend to produce even weaker
students.