The revolution in the teaching of mathematics is one of the major discoveries in the history of education thought. It opens up countless possibilities. One of its basic elements is, of course, the modern mathematical sciences, which, in thier varied branches represent (today more than ever before) the ability of the human mind to create a language of symbols that is not tied to the particular and the contingent, but is capable of rising to necessary rational and universal relationships. The same symbolic language is capable of generating endlessly new technical forms. The new mathematics is oriented towards stimulating within the child thinking and inventive capacities for logical investigations. Under the new pedagogy, mathematics serves to promote the human individual, making the student reason with himself, draw on an inner dicipline to confront the most rigorous and demanding symbols and maintain his freedom for logical structures. The new mathematics seek to restore the Platonic pedagogical ideal of the slave who is guided by the teacher to discover for himself a mathematical theorem and to formulate it with discipline and precision. It has no less a goal than the preparation of today's child for a life of dignity in a teachologically biased world which constantly threatens the initiative of free logical thought.
C.C. FERNANDINI
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