The Philadelphia Inquirer's science writer Tom Avril has out today a thoroughly enjoyable and well-written story on, of all things, calculus. We learn soon enough in this account that there is at least one good reason Avril is fully in his comfort level writing it. He is a former math teacher and, while he didn't teach calculus he did complete a course in it as an engineering student in his pre-journalism days.
The news is that a Univ. of Pennsylvania math professor has 48,000 students in 62 countries taking his online calculus course, and that it just recently received accreditation. So, it can count just like the courses that Penn undergrads take while sitting in a classroom on campus and while they, their parents, or a scholarship program pays a pretty tuition price.
One gets a quick bath in a tubful of math words – Avril is happy to have been able to slip "asymptotic" into the lede and past his editors. That, and "secant function." The story also amounts to a near-dithyramb on the joys and depth of calculus as an intellectual adventure and triumph. Many mass media science writers have taken some rigorous science and math courses (and remember their essentials), but many more have not, I'd hazard to guess. A lot of us could not have handled this story's rudiments so well.
Good job.
However…
What's not to like? That would be the absence of one of journalism's more important ingredients: context.
Online, open, or distance, learning is hot these days. Universities among other institutions are offering a lot of their courses, to anybody who signs up (maybe they'll need the prerequisite e-transcript of coursse) and often free. This includes math courses. A story on the Penn professor's popular new class ought better be presented as a local example of a worldwide phenomenon in pedagogy. I can't put my finger on it, but I just read a story that suggests that this is both the salvation and extension of higher education – and perhaps the shrinkage of universities as we know them. Tuition too high at the college of your choice? Why not just take up home schooling – but with some of the vast new resources by highly competent teachers streamed right to your screen and ear buds? Not for everybody, but on the other hand students in remote regions of poor countries are now able to soak up – without going anywhere to get it – what used to be available most commonly at the likes of Ivy League and Oxbridge schools.
A few examples, including calculus, pop up on a short search:
- Education Portal Math 104: Calculus.
- Khan Academy : Calculus ;
- Stanford University EPGY Online High School: Mathematics
- MIT Open Courseware Mathematics
And while I can't find the original story that lately clued readers including me in, here's another that does it well:
- Tech Crunch – Gregory Ferenstein: Online Education Is Replacing Physical Colleges At A Crazy Fast Pace.
With a quick reference to the explosive growth of open education along exactly the lines of the Penn professor's course the Inquirer's already smooth piece would have provided readers a richer lesson. (Avril may have tried it but got cut short by space and editor's orders for all I know.)
*UPDATE!
For all I know is seldom sufficient. I emailed Tom on this omission and got this reward:
Ah, a good question.
That’s because this was intended as a “follow” to our original story, here, which does talk about the broader power of online ed:
So the editor of the paper read that original story, and thought “Hmmm, didn’t Avril used to be a math teacher? Let’s get him to take the class!!”
And thus I found myself spending the afternoon looking at inverse functions and other lovely things.
I never taught calculus, as I was teaching at a junior-high school.
So my calculus was a tad rusty!!
My original point stands, but barely, a pale and timid replacement. A follow that is a few days after its partner ought to have a whiff of the reason for its being written. But this is near to full exculpation, totally easy to understand why it happened.
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