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  3. While human achievements in mathematics continue to reach new levels of complexity, many of us who aren’ t mathematicians at hea

While human achievements in mathematics continue to reach new levels of complexity, many of us who aren’ t mathematicians at hea

admin2021-01-08  41
问题     While human achievements in mathematics continue to reach new levels of complexity, many of us who aren’ t mathematicians at heart (or engineers by trade) may struggle to remember the last time we used calculus (微积分).
    It’ s a fact not lost on American educators, who amid rising math failure rates are debating how math can better meet the real-life needs of students. Should we change the way math is taught in schools, or eliminate some courses entirely?
    Andrew Hacker, Queens College political science professor, thinks that advanced algebra and other higher-level math should be cut from curricula in favor of courses with more routine usefulness, like statistics.
    " We hear on all sides that we’ re not teaching enough mathematics, and the Chinese are running rings around us," Hacker says. "I’m suggesting we’ re teaching too much mathematics to too many people... not everybody has to know calculus. If you’re going to become an aeronautical (航空的) engineer, fine. But most of us aren’ t. "
    Instead, Hacker is pushing for more courses like the one he teaches at Queens College: Numeracy 101. There, his students of "citizen statistics" learn to analyze public information like the federal budget and corporate reports. Such courses, Hacker argues, are a remedy for the numerical illiteracy of adults who have completed high-level math like algebra but are unable to calculate the price of, say, a carpet by area.
    Hacker’ s argument has met with opposition from other math educators who say what’ s needed is to help students develop a better relationship with math earlier, rather than teaching them less math altogether.
    Maria Droujkova is a founder of Natural Math, and has taught basic calculus concepts to 5-year-olds. For Droujkova, high-level math is important, and what it could use in American classrooms is an injection of childlike wonder.
    " Make mathematics more available," Droujkova says. " Redesign it so it’ s more accessible to more kinds of people: young children, adults who worry about it, adults who may have had bad experiences. "
    Pamela Harris, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, has a similar perspective. Harris says that American education is suffering from an epidemic of "fake math"—an emphasis on rote memorization (死记硬背) of formulas and steps, rather than an understanding of how math can influence the ways we see the world.
    Andrew Hacker, for the record, remains skeptical.
    "I’m going to leave it to those who are in mathematics to work out the ways to make their subject interesting and exciting so students want to take it," Hacker says. " All that I ask is that alternatives be offered instead of putting all of us on the road to calculus. "
What does Andrew Hacker’ s Numeracy 101 aim to do?
选项 A、Allow students to learn high-level math step by step.
B、Enable students to make practical use of basic math.
C、Lay a solid foundation for advanced math studies.
D、Help students to develop their analytical abilities.
答案B
解析 推理题。原文第五段最后一句指出，哈克认为“Numeracy 101”这类课程为那些数字文盲成年人提供了补救方法，这些人虽学习了像代数这样的高层次数学，但仍然不会按面积计算出一块地毯的价格。由此可知，该课程的目标是让学生能够把数学运用到实际生活中，故答案为B。A、C两项原文均未提及，故排除。第五段第二句提到，学“公民统计学”的学生会学习如何分析联邦预算和企业报告之类的公共数据，尽管这里提到了“分析”，但这个例子的侧重点在于说明哈克的目的是让学生学以致用，而不是侧重于培养他们的分析能力，故排除D项。
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