söndag 18 maj 2014

Crisis in Mathematics Education in France like in Sweden

Mathematics education is falling freely also in France as reported on images des Maths (in my translation):
  • The many problems present in mathematics education today is of concern to everybody. Results are falling since 1990.
  • Many people speak thereof but few do anything about it.
  • The debate is troublesome in the community of mathematicians, and even more so for the general public.
  • The phenomenon has several causes: 
  • One is the training of mathematics teachers. It was better before.
This is the same analysis as in Sweden based on the following postulates:
  1. The training of math teachers was good before and math eduction was then working.
  2. Today math education does not work anymore and the reason can only be that the training of math teachers is not as good as before.
  3. Hence what is needed is re-training of math teachers to the old standard.
Billions of tax-payer money is now spent in Sweden spent on re-training in collegial form, where teachers without "good" education "lift" each other into the old level of training. 

Of course, the result is small and much money and effort is lost. 

What is forgotten, both in France and Sweden, is that in our computer time, math education has a new role to play and the old role is outdated and cannot be resurrected. Very few people in the math community are willing to face this reality, and the result is that the fall of math education continues to new low levels each year, in France and Sweden alike. 

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