I think the headline summary, and even a quote from the prof: ----- “Drilling without understanding is harmful,” Boaler said in an interview. “I’m not saying that math facts aren’t important. I’m saying that math facts are best learned when we understand them and use them in different situations.” ----- are vast oversimplifications of what she is actually saying. (Actually, any professor who can't explain what they are talking about can be harmful to their career.) I think what she is really saying (see < http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/09/should-we-stop-making-kids-me... >) is that giving students a time-pressured test that they do poorly on . . . only results in those students developing an increased anxiety about the subject, which ends up with those students having "math anxiety" and never doing any better in the subject. (And growing up to become one of those hysterical parents who think we should do away with algebra courses in H.S.) For better math students, such as we all probably were, this is not an issue. For the others, my opinion is that it's much better to give them positive feedback for what they do accomplish, but maybe no negative feedback for what they don't: the merit-badge concept. (Remember, you read it here first.) --Dan

On Feb 13, 2015, at 12:37 AM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:

http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/11/stanford-professor-says-memorizing-multipl... --rwg _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun