From kindergarten on ...
Some time early in the 20th century, a few math enthusiasts started a publishing house Mathesis in the then Russian city of Odessa. The purpose to publish books interesting and useful to young people and those responsible for their upbringing. The enterprise was around from 1904 through 1925 straddling the time of October revolution.
More recently another generation of enthusiasts began collecting Mathesis books and making them available on the web. There are a few math books already available for a free download. One I noticed immediately was a Russian translation of T. Sundara Row's Geometrical Exercises in Paper Folding. Which caused me to seek the original. A I soon found out, the original 1901 book is also available on the web. This was nice as now I can paste a quote from the author's introduction without having to translate it:
The use of the kindergarten gifts not only affords interesting occupations to boys and girls, but also prepares their minds for the appreciation of science and art. Conversely the teaching of science and art later on can be made interesting and based upon proper foundations by reference to kindergarten occupations.
To me it is rather obvious that for a school reform to have a chance to succeed it has to start very early on and encompass not only the middle or high school but the whole system of education. For, say, as long as the colleges base their admissions on standardized tests, the necessary skills acquisition will be important to schools and students. And algebra, appearing to be an essential language of mathematics and being already used in the first college math courses, the reformists now (and this is not the first time) naturally try to put emphasis on study of algebra in schools. But, as S. Row seems to understand, the change should start in the kindergarten.
We'll probably have to wait just a few years to observe the failure of the latest legislature that mandates Algebra I to all high school students. Voices are already heard that most of the students won't be ready to take algebra in the prescribed three years period. Of course not. And this reform/failure marry-go-round will continue whirling and whirling until and unless the rash to achieve short term results recedes and gives way to a thoughful, deliberate and necessaily slow process that starts at the kindergarten.
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