[Edu-sig] Teaching Middle-School Math with Python

[Fred Bartlett]

Has anyone had any success in changing public-school math curricula at
the middle-school level?

I've been busily learning Python while my daughter has been busily
learning 6th-grade math. The contrast between the two experiences is
considerable: I can learn Python in a clear, clean, organized way; my
daughter can't learn math that way -- well, she _could_, but her
textbook militates against it.

Her textbook takes a "problem-solving" approach and teaches "high-level"
thinking. By this they mean, I think, large numbers of word problems.
That would be fine, of course, if they did it right. But they seem to be
teaching heuristics rather than algorithms -- that is, each kind of
problem is treated as if it were sui generis.

I was especially saddened -- and motivated -- when she asked me, "How
could anyone ever be interested in this stuff?"

I began to muse that an introduction to programming could both help kids
see the connections among types of problems and provide a salutary dose
of rigor to the curriculum. (Donald Knuth said somewhere that one can't
really be sure that one understands something until one can teach a
computer to do it.)

The only other languages I found in my web searches used below the
college level were Java, C/C++, (Visual)Basic, and Scheme -- none of
which would be appropriate at the level I'm contemplating. But Python,
for all its virtues, is a relatively obscure language. It's a good bet
that no one at the Board of Ed has heard of it!

Meanwhile, I found out about our "technology" curriculum from middle
through high school: It's all Microsoft, so we're paying tens or
hundreds of thousands of dollars for license fees. (I'm sure no one here
will defend that practice!) I would like to change that, too.

Kirby Urner has done some interesting things with algebra and beyond;
but I didn't find any pre-algebra math at his site.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger's _The Number Devil_ contains the kind of math
I'm looking for: simple -- but interesting! -- applications of basic
arithmetic on the integers (and, soon enough, the reals).

So -- any hints for me out there?

Thanks!
Fred