I’m not sure how I didn’t know about this book already, but I’m glad I do now. It’s called A Mathematician’s Lament, and begins with the following quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “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.”
It’s not every day that a book about math, or anything about math for that matter, invokes… well, humanity. That was my experience in reading through this excerpt. If you’re someone who loves math, or dreads it, or worries how you’ll ever help your kids learn it, have a look at the excerpt and see if this one might be for you.
Filed under: Good Stuff, On Kids and Learning Tagged: | algebra, art, capacity, choice, creativity, exploration, fractions, inquiry, intelligence, learning, Math, math practice, resistance, teaching
