A child wants nice and no mean numbers

Mathematics education is a mess. In primary education the development in arithmetic, geometry and other math topics is greatly hindered.

Mathematicians are trained for abstraction while education is an empirical issue. When mathematicians meet in class with real life pupils then they solve their cognitive dissonance by holding on to tradition. But tradition and its course materials have not been designed for empirical didactics. Pupils suffer the consequences.

The West reads and writes from left to right but the numbers come from India and Arabia where one reads and writes from right to left. In English 14 is pronounced as fourteen but it should rather be ten·four. 21 is pronounced in proper order as twenty·one, but is better pronounced as two·ten·one, so that the decimal positional system is also supported by pronunciation.

This is just one example of a long list. An advice is to re-engineer mathematics education for all age-groups. This book looks at primary education. Parliaments around the world are advised to have each their own parliamentary enquiry to investigate the issue and make funds available for change.

The author is an econometrician and teacher of mathematics.