This is an overstatement, and not true. Math textbooks that are “traditional” (i.e., not “reform-based” “standards-based” “brain-based” “research-based” or any of the other trendy descriptors used by eduationists who proliferate the blog bandwiths these days) are, like many things, good and bad. There are traditional math textbooks that do a great job, and those that don’t. If you happened to have a traditional math book that didn’t do the job, please don’t lump all traditional math texts in with that one. Take a look at the Singapore Math books which one can order via the internet. They follow a sequential order of topics and information is presented clearly, with good problems, and techniques as to how to solve such problems. That such problems may not meet the criteria of “real-world” (sports, politics, science) is a red-herring. The skills needed to solve the rather complex multi-step problems in Singapore’s texts are the very skills that must be mastered by students if they are to solve problems in science and engineering. They generalize to more complex problems. To say that students need “real world” connections in order for math to make sense, or to be interesting is the canard du jour generally given by those who don’t understand what mathematics is about or how it is used.

History textbooks obsolete? How so. Does the past change? Maybe what we have learned about the past does, but the basic facts of US and world history have remained the same for some time. Science textbooks obsolete? Again, there are general principles that students must master that have not been altered.

The essay above illustrates the point that E.D. Hirsch makes in “The Schools we Need and Why We Don’t Have Them”, in which educationists dismiss factual knowledge as “mere facts”. Because the world is a changing place, they argue, students must learn how to learn so they know how to find out what they need to know in this changing world. This argument is specious. Unfortunately it is taught in education schools and is believed by many who are in charge of how schools are run and what goes into their curricula.