Why the professor can't teach: Mathematics and the dilemma of university education
By Morris Kline
* Publisher: St. Martin's Press
* Number Of Pages: 288
* Publication Date: 1977
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0312878672
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780312878672
Summary: Why the Professor Can't Teach
Rating: 4
This is a book of complaints peppered with suggested solutions. The fundamental complaint is that mathematics is not taught with the student in mind. Universities focus on research and give teaching a secondary status. Classes are too large, teaching by professors is aloof, and too often it is a novice graduate student who teaches. There is an emphasis on pure mathematics, without reference to its applications or the context in which it was developed. Textbooks are sterile, too formal, and poorly written. Mathematics is presented as a complex, logical edifice with no attempt to explain its intellectual value outside of itself nor why it might be of value or interest to the non-mathematician. Textbooks written for liberal arts students are trivial and banal if not irrelevant and misguided. The textbook industry is motivated by greed and subject to fashion rather than thoughtful considerations of pedagogy.
This book was published in 1977. Kline had previously written the 1973 book Why Johnny Can't Add: The Failure of the New Mathematics. His most enduring text is likely the 1972: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. He was born in 1908 and died in 1992. In the 1980s he wrote Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (1982) and Mathematics and the Search for Knowledge (1986). Earlier books include: Mathematics in Western Culture (1953), Mathematics and the Physical World (1959), Mathematics, a Cultural Approach (1962), Calculus, an Intuitive and Physical Approach (1967), and Mathematics for the Liberal Arts (1967).
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