Feature Articles,  Monograph,  No. 2,  Publications

What Really are the Basics?

Monograph No. 2: September 1974

MATHEMATICS TEACHING – The State of the Art

Publication of the Mathematics Council of The Alberta Teachers’ Association

123 – 127

What Really are the Basics?

LOUIS S. COHEN

If we are to look upon education as building whole people so that they can function in a democratic society, we must re-examine what is fundamental. I suppose if we were to ask almost anyone what the fundamentals are, he would cite the three R’s meaning reading, writing and ciphering. This is in keeping with the notion that the school is the place for book learning, that the rest of the organism does not and should not grow in school but should do it somewhere else.