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News and Views
Nature 407, 575 (5 October 2000) | doi:10.1038/35036668
100 and 50 years ago
Prof. John Perry has asked me to write something in criticism of the views
he has lately expressed about the teaching of mathematics... It is shocking
that young people should be addling their brains over mere logical subtleties,
trying to understand the proof of one obvious fact in terms of something equally,
or, it may be, not quite so obvious, and conceiving a profound dislike for
mathematics, when they might be learning geometry, a most important fundamental
subject. I hold the view that it is essentially an experimental science, like
any other, and should be taught observationally, descriptively and experimentally
in the first place... The value of 
should be measured; it may be
done to a high degree of accuracy.
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