I don’t want to teach my kids maths, I want my kids to LIVE Maths

Fractal Frost pattern, Wikimedia Commons

This is a post in response to Penelope Trunk’s post on not teaching Maths, as well as the many, many comments on the blog. It made me sad. It made me think. And it reinforced for me the idea that the maths taught in school is – the wrong maths.

It’s a discussion that you will hear whenever you get a group of mathematicians together. The things that inspire, that make you go ‘wow!’ are the things you never see in school.

Imagine for a moment that learning english was taught only through reading ‘Terms and Conditions on Contracts‘. Worthy and useful, perhaps. But you never saw poetry. There was no mention of Shakespere, and the idea of a story or novel was incomprehensible to your teachers. Who would ‘love’ english after 13 years of that? Why would you want to know how to read?
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