A 1959 Comment on Engineering Education

[Igel]

9. Still true.

Facts are easy to memorize. My HS students like to be able to take numbers and plug them into equations.

Ask them to work more abstractly, just with pure math, and they balk.

Ask them to explain why those equations work, what principles are involved is a problem--which goes back to doing things with pure math, because if you don't understand what's underlying the model you're trying to build you don't know how to build the model. What's underlying the model? Basic principles.

College Board/AP makes a big deal out of them. AP teachers make a big deal out of them. But high-schoolers at the "concrete-operational" stage when they're 16, 17, 18 ... They miss the point.