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A Mathematician Lament Paul Lockhart Analysis

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A Mathematician’ Lament by Paul Lockhart, demonstrates a musician has woken up from a nightmare and his dream was about how the community is being forced to have music education. It brings many theories and analysis in the “language of music”, which makes the educators to be more curios to listen or play music. This leads to more advance topics to train students in the primary and secondary school, as it creates more opportunities to improve in school. As Lockhart, said “Most of them couldn’t care less about how important music is in today’s world; I guess there are just music people and non-music people”; as the musician realizes that the society will never remove a beautiful art form, just like mathematics. But, today in our culture, doesn’t let the students to have a curiosity …show more content…

Another point the author makes, he criticizes the way school mathematics, like the treatment of mathematics instruction as a race of poor educational practices. The art of mathematics is finding the true answer, it’s the explanation or the argument of the process to get the true answer. In addition, Lockhart’s explanation of mathematics is “Math is not about following directions, it’s about making new directions”, however many schools will not educate more dense mathematics or give more imagination of creative aspects of mathematics. The section “Instrument of the devil”, has another Lockhart’s criticism about how the education is forcing students to follow the rigid format and giving their proofs or solutions. In addition, his view is that a proof is like a work of fiction or a poem in that its goals is to satisfy. Lockhart shares that the way of teaching students about the concepts of mathematics, can decrease the amount of connecting or understanding to other science, engineering, and technology ideas. Mathematics brings a fantasy to the students, which it will be a meaningful human experience in the

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