At top level,we believe that every course or academic experience in high school
should be used as an opportunity to help students develop what we have come
to call good general habits of mind. These general habits of mind are not the
sole province of mathematics – the research historian,the house-builder,and the
mechanic who correctly diagnoses what ails your car all use them. Nor are they
guaranteed byproducts of learning mathematics – it is the major lament of the
reform efforts that it has been shown possible for students to learn the facts and
techniques that mathematicians (historians,auto diagnosticians...) have developed
without ever understanding how mathematicians (or these others) think.