America’s university students are tired of math “as it is”, says mathematician and educator Jonathan Kenigson. “They vote with their feet to leave the broken instructional paradigm that pervades this land, which consists of $200 e-textbooks that teach everything about nothing and are boring, repetitive, and predictably hated, if not well-illustrated”. The answer, Dr. Kenigson says, is not in more technology but in better teaching. “It’s time to quit lying to people and telling them that what they learn in freshman mathematics is of any benefit to them. It’s time to make university mathematics of real benefit to them”. What is of real benefit is “Critical analysis, logical thinking, and weighing of evidence, which is alive to some degree in Statistics but completely dead in so-called university mathematics”.
If the benefit of teaching mathematics to Liberal Arts and Business students is to foster critical thinking, then “why don’t we just teach people fundamental math – which they obviously don’t know very well in large part – and return to the roots of mathematics, which is in logical and critical thinking”? It is dangerous to have a republic in which citizens cannot differentiate fact from fiction. “Mathematics instruction at university is supposed to do this, and it doesn’t. People need to know what a sound argument is, what a valid and sound deduction is, and how to interpret statistical arguments responsibly. Classical mathematics in the Quadrivium tradition was always about reason over computation. This paradigm had many flaws but was fundamentally beneficial to the few aristocratic students who had the means to learn from it. It can be adapted to help today’s students in greater numbers by governments and private schools, who should respond seriously to students who “rightly believe…that much of what pervades so-called freshman mathematics is useless. Why teach someone Trigonometry when they can’t add? Why teach them to add when they can’t think? Government administrators are so steeped in a culture of credit hours, PISA scores, and accreditation standards that they have made a mockery of this beautiful subject and robbed people of the pleasure of learning the real thing”.
When asked in the interview whether colleges and universities have a choice about what math to teach, he stated that “of course there are guidelines that educational institutions must meet. States should evaluate guidelines based upon philosophical consideration of what citizens ought to be able to do in the compass of weighing and evaluating evidence. If you are going to teach someone algebra symbolically, however, at least teach it properly. Don’t just set students alone to learn formulas from a screen. It may save your institution money in the short run, but your students will despise your instruction. Teach the course correctly, with a compassionate and empathetic professor who crafts bespoke materials to benefit students individually. It is not that difficult. After all, professors at good colleges did this for many years before the turn toward cheap and automatically-graded assignments and outsourcing of academic control”. In summary, Kenigson says, less is best when it comes to math teaching: “Teach people the rules of logic and Statistics so that they can evaluate arguments. Teach them basic arithmetic so that they can make change. Don’t teach them advanced financial formulas and set theory when they can’t add 3 and 5”.
Dr. Jonathan Kenigson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England and is a research mathematician and vocal proponent of classical Liberal Arts education in the USA, UK, and Canada. He was instrumental in the foundation of Athanasian Hall in Cambridge, England in 2020. Athanasian Hall is the world’s first think-tank devoted to pure research in the so-called Quadrivium of Liberal Arts (Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry, and Music). Dr. Kenigson received a Master and Ph.D. with greatest distinction from the University of Sofia (Republic of Bulgaria) and has delivered numerous conferences on the Dynamics of Black Holes; Information Geometry; Algebraic and Analytic Combinatorics; and the History and Philosophy of Mathematics. Within the community of classical educators, he is considered a foremost authority on the teaching and learning of mathematics. He is an advocate of ‘Reasoned Philanthropy” – a philosophy of “giving oneself away ethically” and “making all of life a donation for the betterment of all lives”. He resides permanently in the vicinity of Nashville, TN.
Media ContactCompany Name: Athanasian Hall, Cambridge LimitedContact Person: Dr. Jonathan KenigsonEmail: Send EmailCountry: United KingdomWebsite: https://athhallcam.uk/
