Word: beberman
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...Illinois has had a team working on a way to change all that. The project was launched when university authorities found engineering applicants were consistently ill-equipped mathematically, wasted months in learning basic math skills they should have learned in high school. It assigned young (then 26) Mathematician Max Beberman of the University's College of Education to show the high schools how to step up their math instruction. Beberman, later joined by Page, decided the trouble lay in the whole approach to math teaching. He junked old methods, drew up a new curriculum, now has five Midwest high...
...John? As Beberman and Page see it, high-school math has sunk to its present state because students learn their theorems and formulas for an array of algebra problems ("If John is twice as old as Jane was four years ago . . ."), but never find out what makes the mathematician's brain work. In the hope of making arithmetic lively, some teachers insist on making each problem functional, as if there were nothing more to the subject than how to add up a grocery bill or compute compound interest. Such teachers completely misunderstand the adolescent, says Beberman. "The adolescent...
...large extent, Beberman and Page have cast aside the traditional tags (algebra, geometry, trigonometry, etc.) that tend to make math seem a series of separate and unattached compartments. "Frequently," says Beberman, "our students do not know whether they are doing geometry or algebra at any given point.'' But the basic intent is to reveal math as a "creative process in which we want our students to participate." Instead of telling students how to solve equations, "we just explain to them what the root of an equation is and then give them 30 pages of problems and tell them...