Mathematics should not be seen as a practical subject, where you are taught only stuff that will become useful later (without seeing exactly how).Instead of plugging some variables into memorized formulas, we should do mathematics for fun, without thinking about its practical applications. The author argues that teaching mathematics in its natural state will completely change how students see the subject.

The Way To Do Mathematics

Imagine a world in which children have mandatory music classes in school where they only learn music theory, without being allowed to compose or listen to a song.That is how the author of the book sees the way mathematics is taught in school.

A Musician’s Nightmare 

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Just as music or painting are not done with a sensible purpose in mind, but rather as food for the soul, mathematics should be treated in the same way.Pure mathematics exists only in our imagination, so starting from a problem you can continue to explore countless other implications. There is also a lot to discover, and you feel exalted when you suddenly discover something that was there all along.

Mathematics Is An Art

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent, it’s because they are made with ideas.

The way to teach mathematics should be to encourage playing and having fun with ideas, only introducing new concepts and definitions when they are necessary.The question that arises in this case is whether it is a problem that students could end up finishing school and not knowing formulas such as the quadratic equation. The author makes the case that most adults don’t actually remember it, and don’t even need it anyway.Even if you consider its applications in science and engineering, teaching creative and independent thinking in mathematics will help students more than memorizing formulas.

A Better Mathematics Education

Mathematics is beautiful, but this is rarely shown in school.

“One of the best critiques of current K-12 mathematics education I have ever seen, written by a first-class research mathematician who elected to devote his teaching career to K-12 education.” —Keith Devlin, NPR’s “Math Guy”A brilliant research mathematician reveals math to be a creative art form on par with painting, poetry, and sculpture, and rejects the standard anxiety-producing teaching methods used in most schools today. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart’s controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and parents alike, altering the way we think about math forever.Paul Lockhart is the author of Arithmetic, Measurement, and A Mathematician’s Lament. He has taught mathematics at Brown University, University of California, Santa Cruz, and to K-12 level students at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York.