måndag 10 juni 2013

Need of Education in Mathematics - IT

Images des Math issued by CNRS reports on a proposal by L'Academie des Sciences to strengthen school education in Information Science and Technology (IT), and expresses the concern that while  the proposal identifies the strong impact of IT in physics, chemistry, biology, economy and social sciences, the connection between IT and mathematics is less visible.

The reason L'Academie des Sciences forgets the fundamental connection between mathematics and IT, is that school mathematics is focussed on a tradition of analytical mathematics, where the IT-revolution of computational mathematics is not visible.

This connects to my proposal of a reform of school mathematics into a new school subject named Mathematics - IT combining analytical and computational mathematics with the world of apps as the world of applications of mathematics using IT. Without such a reform school mathematics will follow the fate of classical latin and greek once at the center of the curriculum but now gone. This is not understood by mathematicians paralyzed by the world of apps based on computational mathematics.

The strength of the (aristochratic) tradition of analytical mathematics is preventing a marriage with (newly rich) computational mathematics, which would serve as the adequate school mathematics of the IT age. As often, a strength can be turned into a fatal weakness when conditions change but strong tradition resists reform.

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