lpetrich
Contributor
Richard Feynman on Teaching Math to Kids and the Lessons of Knowledge
He got into considering lower-level education when he thought about what sort of education his children was to receive. He rejected a first-grade physics textbook that attributed several things' motions to "energy", because he thought that that was not saying very much. Attributing falling to "gravity" or wear to "friction" he thought equally vacuous.
In 1964, he joined a commission in California for assessing mathematics textbooks. Those were the days of the "New Math", introducing lots of abstractions and advanced concepts at an early age.
Biographer James Gleick noted: "Feynman proposed that first-graders learn to add and subtract more or less the way he worked out complicated integrals— free to select any method that seems suitable for the problem at hand."
Like adding 29 and 3 by finding the next number for 29 three times: 29, 30, 31, 32.
I couldn't find much more than that in this blog entry, however.
He got into considering lower-level education when he thought about what sort of education his children was to receive. He rejected a first-grade physics textbook that attributed several things' motions to "energy", because he thought that that was not saying very much. Attributing falling to "gravity" or wear to "friction" he thought equally vacuous.
He may have been too picky there, especially about energy and gravity.Shoe leather wears out because it rubs against the sidewalk and the little notches and bumps on the sidewalk grab pieces and pull them off.” That is knowledge. “To simply say, ‘It is because of friction,’ is sad, because it’s not science.”
In 1964, he joined a commission in California for assessing mathematics textbooks. Those were the days of the "New Math", introducing lots of abstractions and advanced concepts at an early age.
He argued that this was knowledge of words, not actual knowledge -- and convincingly so.Feynman was skeptical of this approach but rather than simply let it go, he popped the balloon.
He argued to his fellow commissioners that sets, as presented in the reformers’ textbooks, were an example of the most insidious pedantry: new definitions for the sake of definition, a perfect case of introducing words without introducing ideas.
A proposed primer instructed first-graders: “Find out if the set of the lollipops is equal in number to the set of the girls.”
To Feynman this was a disease. It confused without adding precision to the normal sentence: “Find out if there are just enough lollipops for the girls.”
According to Feynman, specialized language should wait until it is needed.
Biographer James Gleick noted: "Feynman proposed that first-graders learn to add and subtract more or less the way he worked out complicated integrals— free to select any method that seems suitable for the problem at hand."
Like adding 29 and 3 by finding the next number for 29 three times: 29, 30, 31, 32.
He proposed that kids be given simple algebra problems (2 times what plus 3 is 7) and be encouraged to solve them through the scientific method, which is tantamount to trial and error. This, he argued, is what real scientists do.
...
It was better in the end to have a bag of tricks at your disposal that could be used to solve problems than one orthodox method. Indeed, part of Feynman's genius was his ability to solve problems that were baffling others because they were using the standard method to try and solve them. He would come along and approach the problem with a different tool, which often led to simple and beautiful solutions.
I couldn't find much more than that in this blog entry, however.