Marion Brady says, "I hate to say it, but it's my view that much of what's
being taught, especially from about age 10 on, simply isn't worth testing.
As I've said before, we teach what we think is important, but we think
it's important merely because it's what we were taught."
Let me give an interesting example of historical significance. Around the
early 1800's the concept of factoring of quadratic equations was very
topical among British Mathematicians, and as a result, was widely covered
in British texts of that time, often to the exclusion of more powerful
methods, such as completing the square.
American text books were just beginning to exit at that time. They were
largely a rehash of British text books, so factoring was included in our
books. As a result of the war of 1812, American texts separated from
British, and went their own way. The British, after a few more years,
returned to teaching the more useful technique of completing the square.
My own daughters in the 1980's learned, as I did, factoring, and very
briefly covered the completing the square technique. All because of
historical accident, we still teach an interesting but irrelevant piece of
mathematics.
Too bad, too. I'm good at factoring.
-- Rol Fessenden LL Bean 76234.3636@compuserve.com