[K.B.]

“George Boole (1815 - 1864) The original Working Class Boy Made Good, Boole was born in the wrong time, in the wrong place, and definitely in the wrong class - he didn't have a hope of growing up to be a mathematical genius, but he did it anyway.”
George Boole, invented Boolean algebra, the fundamental basis that electronics (computers) AND, OR, and NOT gates come from, 100 years before the transistor was invented.

History is filled with cases of ignoring and ridiculing those “different” people that society considered boneheads, and many of these were mathematicians, the ones who didn’t follow the norm, the odd, quirky, some suffering schizophrenia (like the movie “A Beautiful Mind”) or savants (like the “Rain Man”) Our inability to recognize genius has historically been present for centuries.

In some countries educational system, only the best move on. We could do that. Our public school system gives the opportunity for all to learn. We consider them all to be wheat, there is no chaff. We could give tests at 4th 8th and 12th grade and assign futures, jobs and lives, to people based on their test results. This premature specialization would lead us to recognize future plumbers, auto mechanics at an early age and prevent wasting time teaching those students subjects they don’t really care about anyway. It could also trap kids into an occupation they hate and miss out on one they might love. It could also lead people to do exactly what their parents do for a living as the learning would be more limited.

Kids in 4th grade are currently doing some simple robotics with computers. The current grade level content expectations for 6th , 7th and 8th grade allow students to experience mathematics concepts of probability, similarity, quadratic equations at an earlier time in their educational experience. We used to bore them with repetition, drill to kill, etc till they got to the 9th grade where they finally took Algebra. Today’s kids heads are wired differently than ours were. Kids that are interested in math need exposure at a young age as to what the possibilities are. Exposure to computers, calculators, robotics, gives them a chance to see what future careers in mathematics might be like. It shouldn’t take 12 years to master arithmetic. To borrow your carpenter example, We wouldn’t have many carpenters if we told them they had to have 11 years of experience with hand saws before they could use power saws. The tools are there, just don’t turn them into crutches you need for life, use them when appropriate. Yes, there are a lot of teachers who do not know what appropriate use of technology is. Kids need to learn the basics but they don’t need it drilled into their head till they hate math. They need constant exposure to basics as well as introduction to higher levels of thought and introduction to the use of modern technology.