Re:The Secret Math Society Known as Nicolas Bourbaki
by dnpp123 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @04:21AM
(#25044085)
Sure but what good is an education method if the teachers don't understand it. I don't doubt that if you had a great teacher that would work, but considering how focused French education is on mathematics, this was one of the main reason why the social ladder broke.
Re:The Secret Math Society Known as Nicolas Bourbaki
by rq1 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @05:38AM
(#25044487)
I understand, but on the same period, France grew a whole generation of brilliant mathematicians.
I don't think that the two are completely unrelated.
There is basically two solutions: reduce the quality of the material, or teach the teachers. I tend to prefer the second.
Re:The Secret Math Society Known as Nicolas Bourbaki
by dnpp123 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @06:52AM
(#25044932)
> I understand, but on the same period, France grew a whole generation of brilliant mathematicians. I don't think that the two are completely unrelated.
If you could prove me that there were more brilliant mathematicians educated in France during the 60's/70's compared to other periods, I'd be interested.
Even if this is the case (which I'm not sure), at least it's pretty clear it lowered the median (whether this is good or not is another debate ;)
Eg. when teaching set theory, teachers were debating what should be a perfect representation of a set (is it an ellipse or circle... etc.?) Children were completely lost because of this.
If you don’t draw a perfect ellipse to represent a set then you had a bad mark and so on and so forth.