ABSTRACT
Many of us-myself included-must first stop hyperventilating before we can even read on. Mathematics (so-called) “story problems” such as the one just cited represent a precisely identifiable and recognizable form of panic, urgency, and bewilderment that is an oddly shared experience of schooling in North America, Europe, and, through the beneficent dispensations of these centers of educational imagination, worldwide. And, if this simple example is not enough to exhaust and set the teeth on edge, consider:
These odd pedaeo-mathematical formations have become the butt of many a joke. In fact, Gary Larson, in his now-retired The Far Side comic strip, has, in two different cartoons, given us a glimpse of just how broad and grand are such panics. In one cartoon, Hell’s Library is a shelf-full of story-problem books; and in another, a great, final question that Saint Peter seeks an answer to as our final test on the way through the gates of Heaven begins something like this: “Jane leaves the train station heading west.…”
Heaven and Hell, indeed. Such story problems are reported to be the beginning of the end for many of the hundreds of student teachers I have taught in courses on “Elementary School Curriculum Methods.” Many times in these classes, simply putting the word “mathematics” on the chalkboard in the university classroom has brought tears. There is perhaps no mere coincidence here, these invocations of Heaven and Hell-the terrible sense of demand, of something being desperately at stake and feeling totally helpless, almost guilty, in the face of all this.
