Mathematics in the elementary school grades requires students to represent numbers and perform the four arithmetic operations on whole numbers, decimals and fractions. Regularly administered standardized tests are administered to assess and compare the quality of schools. In many cases, this prompts teachers to focus on teaching a mastery of the basic skills by having students routinely practice the application of the algorithms.
The egalitarian policies against streaming means that each classroom contains students of all abilities. Consequently, the opportunity to explore problems requiring creative thinking is lost to the time required to raise the least capable students to the minimum standard. When students are streamed, those who are excited by the challenge of creative problems can be placed together in a classroom where they are with classmates who share their enthusiasm. This is the environment in which creative thinking thrives. If you’ve ever attempted to stimulate an unmotivated student to learn something difficult, you can understand the difficulty of this task. Imagine having to stimulate a classroom with many such students. It can be done, but it is a Herculean task that would drain the energy of the most ambitious teachers. However, there are ways to achieve this that I will explain in more detail in a later post.
In the secondary schools, there is a better opportunity for streaming and this is an environment where teachers can assign interesting problems from math olympiads. By setting aside some time every few classes to explore the creative solutions to such problems, a teacher can foster interest in mathematics as a creative enterprise. Some teachers are currently engaged in applying such techniques in regular classes and others do this in special summer camps. Their graduates are the ones who typically enter the STEM subjects at university.
For a couple of years I traveled to elementary and secondary schools giving special “motivational math” presentations involving problems and puzzles to let students see the “fun” part of mathematics. I described some of these sessions in detail in a book titled, Intelligence: Where we Were, Where we Are, & Where we’re Going. It was fun for me, and for the students, but it sapped my energy and gave me a great respect for the demands on teachers.
In the post below, Amit shares his perspective on this issue.https://qr.ae/pyBAc4
