A gift to teachers

Abstract

Reuben Hersh’s What Is Mathematics, Really? is a beautiful gift to math teachers. For many years, despite wave after wave of innovations, math teachers have been bogged down by the insistence that they teach a litany of facts, skills, and concepts that most students will never use. The widespread use of technology seems only to have increased this tendency. Teachers are told to state a carefully specified objective, provide instruction designed to accomplish it, and test, test, test!.