Lockhart's Lament - Sept. 25

Lockhart is a very theatrical lamenter -- but I thoroughly enjoyed reading his ideas. He is a very talented writer, skilled with literary devices and analogies. However, his synonymization of math and the arts makes this hardly surprising. Very recently, I gave a presentation in class, and someone commented on how beautiful my writing was and concluded I must have been an English major. I responded that I was a Math major and everyone laughed -- it was an unintentional but expected punchline. Math is associated with logic and reason, not with creativity and flourish. But after reading Lockhart's lamentations, I'm realizing how strange and unnatural this association would be in a world that hadn't been socialized to see math as a language and vehicle for the sciences. There is a reason that Math often exists in both Arts and Science faculties (and it's not because one is the "easier" option -- another ill-conceived trope). And I do believe this socialization that I've referred to has everything to do with Lockhart's statement that no one has any idea what mathematicians do. It is a field that has been shrouded, mystified, and obfuscated -- why? When I tell people I majored in math, 90% of the time they respond that they could never do that. And I might try to explain to them what exactly I studied, but if I really reflect, I wonder if I even know what I did. And if I can't explain it to someone outside the field, how well do I really understand it?

However, Lockhart's argumentation goes a little too far on the pendulum swing for me in one particular regard. He says, "Schools of education are a complete crock." Now I respect the commitment to dramatic flare; however, I have to disagree here, if only for the debt I've accrued to take this program. All jokes aside, learning how to teach is important -- you cannot teach if you cannot learn. Lockhart says that all you need is to be real, but I'll offer a counter-notion from my TEFL training in Prague: Teaching is 80% who you are and 20% what you know. So I agree that being real and being yourself is definitely part of the gig, but there's more to it. I have learned so much in the last 4 weeks about how to operate an inclusive, anti-racist, equitable classroom, that just being "real" would not have granted me.

I do find it interesting that both Lockhart and Skemp used music analogies to contrast different subjects that pass as "mathematics." Knowing that they weren't contemporaries makes this more interesting because it grants credibility to comparing math to the arts. Perhaps it is more natural than we'd expect, as I discussed above. In all, I conclude that Skemp offers a more balanced argumentation in favour of emergent and relational learning, that gives some grace to the opposing side while pushing them in a new direction. However, I wonder if Lockhart's provocative and imaginative writing makes him more convincing in the long run...