Good thinking must apparently be relearned in a variety of domains; our further
remarks will be specific to the domain of mathematics. So,at top level,we’d
like students to think about mathematics the way mathematicians do,and our
experience tells us that they can. Of course,that doesn’t mean that high school
students should be able to understand the topics that mathematicians worry about,
but it does mean that high school graduates should be accustomed to using real
mathematical methods. They should be able to use the research techniques that
have been so productive in modern mathematics,and they should be able to develop
conjectures and provide supporting evidence for them. When asked to describe
mathematics,they should say something like “it’s about ways for solving problems”
instead of “it’s about triangles” or “solving equations” or “doing percent.” The
danger of wishing for this is that it’s all too easy to turn “it’s about ways for
solving problems” into a curriculum that drills students in The Five Steps For
Solving A Problem. That’s not what we’re after; we are after mental habits that
allow students to develop a repertoire of general heuristics and approaches that can
be applied in many different situations