Subject: Topic Appropriateness
From: Adam Stinchcombe (Stinchca@acc.sunyacc.edu)
Date: Sun Sep 17 2000 - 13:29:28 EDT
Dear group,
My reaction to the original post by RAYFan@aol.com is disbelief that a CC would
teach such a course. Perhaps enough said about that. However, the point that
came to my mind immediately was that the math topics at issue is not the issue.
In other words, replace these extreme examples by less extreme but still vexing
examples. I find myself quickly asking questions that our colleagues,
throughout the US math higher ed community, are asking and have been asking for
quite sometime now.
To make things concrete, take a course that it is reasonable for a CC to teach,
a freshman level second semester Calc course, covering basic integration. What
is the integral? Perhaps it is a mindless procedure, created by the Fund. Thm:
find an antiderivative, subtract the values at the endpoints and get an answer.
Perhaps it is a picture of area under a curve. But it is not really...because
there's that 'negative' area when the graph goes below the axis or when the
endpoints move from right to left, instead of the standard from left to right.
Perhaps it should really be (as I learned in an honors Calc course - BTW Spivak
also wrote a basic calc book which is a fine text) the least upper bound of a
set of lower approximants.
In any case, one can imagine students reacting to all of these options as they
reacted in the tale told by "RAYFan"- nodding heads, memorizing for the tests,
not understanding. The question still remains, so what'd'ya' do?
I suppose at this point a reader might expect profound words of wisdom from me,
that would answer that question for them (and all of US math higher ed)....
I sincerely wish all of you the best of luck with the students you do have this
semester. Perhaps you can lead a large portion of them to some meaningful
learning experiences.
Adam Stinchcombe
Adirondack Community College
Queensbury NY
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