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Dr. Eva J. Szillery’s “Lifelong active learners needed” (BDN oped, July 20-21) ends with the curious comment, “Unifying teachers, parents and students as a society of lifelong active learners will help us regardless of the perfection of detail.” What details can we ignore in reaching unification?
One teacher omitted the detail of presenting logarithms and trigonometry; another, the detail of reasoning. Dr. Szillery notes that, “The primary issue for teaching is the mathematical preparedness of the teachers.”
What details can be ignored here? I teach basic math to students who likely weren’t challenged to reason and perhaps had a teacher who omitted details. These community college students have weak math skills, fragmented math concepts and view themselves as incapable of learning math. As I talk with them, most can recall a specific teacher or incident that triggered this negative constellation. They remember details.
However, these people are invested in learning math, in re-directing their lives, in attaining new skills. Many are parents, invested in their children’s future. What I find most delightful is their inherent drive to know and understand math, which blooms as we play with basic mathematical relationships that have eluded them. They want to know; they want the details.
Dr. Szillery is correct about teacher preparedness. But it’s not only mathematical preparedness. It’s being prepared to observe, listen, question and understand that the details of people’s lives, as they report them, are significant indicators for teaching math. Employing their experiences into the classroom is actively unifying society and is accepting that they are already lifelong active learners. I am, like Dr. Szillery, distressed with poor math preparedness and teaching but I need to paraphrase Dr. Szillery and state that unifying teachers, parents and students as a society of lifelong active learners will help us because of the perfection of detail.
M. Mark Schwartz, Ph.D.
U.S. Department
of Education, retired
Stillwater
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