Destroying a Child's Natural Curiosity
Paul Lockhart's lament, illustrated by a child pinned under a stack of joyless math textbooks.
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Free for classrooms, worksheets, slides and other non-commercial use under CC BY-NC 4.0, with credit to Ben Orlin.
Cartoon by Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings. https://cartoons.mathwithbaddrawings.com/2024-01-01-destroying-a-child-s-natural-curiosity/ (CC BY-NC 4.0)Transcript
"If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done… I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soulcrushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education." – Paul Lockhart
[A child crushed under books: "Math Exercises to Dull Your Mind," "Trig: A Spirit-Crushing New Approach," "The Calculus of Despair," "The Joylessness of X," "Two-Column Proofs"]