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In an on-going discussion about Benezet on the math-teach@mathforum.org list that unfortunately is shedding limited light on the subject, the suggestion was made that "promoters" of Benezet and other reformers (which in this context means "progressive education, student-centered learning, humanistic, and constructivist types") are opposed to memorization. This sort of false accusation is typical of the muddying of the waters by certain fanatic critics of anything outside the neo-Prussian school of how to teach mathematics to children. On Apr 10, 2009, at 1:53 AM, Paul A. Tanner III wrote: [T]here is much written by reformers against this necessary part. This includes all that anti-rote rhetoric which serves as backdoor anti-memorization rhetoric. My Response Wrong again, Paul. I know of no one who opposes memorization (which by the way is NOT the same as rote learning. More on that in a moment). What many people oppose or question (again, not the same thing; I feel ...

I t was 1986, folks (or perhaps 1929), for those keeping score at home. Twenty-three (or eighty) years later and the same arguments are going on, the same mistakes are being made, as if nothing at all has been said like what Louis P. Benezet or Hassler Whitney offered. As if Constance Kamii's work has never been done or published. My thanks to G. S. Chandy for pointing me to this article. It was published while I was in the process of taking undergraduate mathematics courses in NYC and slowly gravitating towards changing fields from literature to mathematics education. I'd never heard of NCTM or any of the other organizations involved in mathematics teaching and research, the Math Wars hadn't officially started yet, and had I read this piece at the time, I would have naively wondered how anyone could be on the other side from people like Benezet and Whitney. Having suffered through a K-12 mathematics education that was about as inspiring as a dead fish in the gutter, it ...