Alien Bookreader’s Reviews > A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form > Status Update

The textbook presents a set of definitions, theorems, and proofs, the teacher copies them onto the blackboard, and the students copy them into their notebooks. They are then asked to mimic them in the exercises. Those that catch on to the pattern quickly are the “good” students.

This is a major theme in mathematics: things are what you want them to be. You have endless choices; there is no reality to get in your way.

Such a good essay
People think they are good at math and go to graduate school only to realize they are actually good at following directions.

To be honest it’s true of school in general. Being able to memorize material for exams is not that useful of a skill. If that’s all you have you will not have a future

“Well, next year they take Pre-Paint-by-Numbers [...] So they’ll get to use what they’ve learned here and apply it to real-life painting situations— dipping the brush into paint, wiping it off, stuff like that. [...] The really excellent painters— the ones who know their colors and brushes backwards and forwards— they get to the actual painting a little sooner"

This essay is so brilliant!