Math an important part of a good education
Inspired by 30 parents of 65th Evanston/Skokie school district ("Parents oppose plan to expand math offerings," March 5), I would like to propose a crucial step further by just cancelling all middle school education. After all it is difficult on kids and teachers, and causes nothing other than stress negative emotions. Particularly geometry, I hated that subject to the fullest fibers of my young soul. Unfortunately I went to Russian middle school, and can you imagine such atrocity: They taught us poor kids this subject since fifth grade. Can you imagine what a 12-year-old kid can learn? He will know how to proof a theorem from basic sets of axioms, logical and creative thinking, ability to tackle each problem independently, god forbid this. And then what, our sons and daughters might potentially go on and become engineers and architects instead of Wall Street brokers or pop singers? How can we allow that? No, I'd rather see our future generation playing Wii, listening to iPods, watching MTV and drinking cola. How geometry can fit that list, I honestly do not understand. And shame on those parents who were trying to get their useless personal agenda on the school board list. What a waste of tax money.
There is one minor thing though; John Benson mentioned in the interview that "Geometry is a significantly different class than any other math class. In geometry, every problem is different." Mr. Benson, maybe this is a technicality, but spending some time in graduate school, I came up to the conclusion that most scientific problems are different. So, I would love to invite you to Northwestern to listen to your interesting ideas, but I am not sure, whether the Graduate Student Association would sponsor your talk. You see, they are a bit biased towards education here. Luckily, 65th school district is not.
- aleksandr m. spokoynyy
2nd year Chemistry Graduate Student
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