A blue-ribbon presidential panel charged with figuring out what has gone wrong with math education in this country. Here is a summary of the findings. They include this observation:
Children badly need both automatic recall of math facts and understanding of big concepts, in effect declawing both sides in the decades-long “math wars.”
This points to a fallacy that seems everywhere in education and elsewhere: the FALSE DICHOTOMY. How would anyone think there needs to be a CHOICE between EITHER knowing material OR understanding it? To be educated about any subject you need BOTH! You also need to be able to apply it yourself.
(Note that the whole range of what education must be is fulfilled in the paradigm of classical education: grammar [knowing]; logic [understanding]; rhetoric [personal application].)
What are some other false dichotomies? (I’ll get you started: faith & works; orthodoxy & mission. . . .)
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