I have questions from this May 21 2012 essay by Prof. Andrew Lo.
Before we can make truly significant improvements in our school systems, we need to develop more refined metrics of educational efficacy across the spectrum of students’ learning abilities, teachers’ teaching abilities, and how they interact. My experience with mathematics is a case in point. Although being Class Scientist gave me renewed confidence that I could succeed despite my handicap in mathematics, I continued to struggle with the subject and had to work much harder than my classmates to overcompensate for this Achilles’ heel. But when I reached high school, something miraculous occurred after I was introduced to “Unified Modern Mathematics”, also known as the “new math”. Now widely considered to be a colossal failure, this pedagogical experiment of the 1970s involved replacing the standard high school mathematics curriculum—algebra, geometry, and trigonometry—with considerably more abstract topics such as sets, groups, rings, and fields. Most students were completely befuddled by these abstractions, but the same neurophysiological quirks that caused me so much grief with numbers now enabled me to see things faster and more clearly than my classmates. [emphasis mine] The transformation was breathtaking—almost overnight, I went from a “C” student to an “A” student in mathematics. It was only then that I realized my brain might be wired differently.
❶ Why would “considerably more abstract topics such as sets, groups, rings, and fields” enable dyscalculic students “to see things faster and more clearly than classmates”? “Most students were completely befuddled by these abstractions”, but why not students with dyscalculia?
❷ What are these “same neurophysiological quirks that caused me so much grief with numbers”?
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