Framing: Curriculum By Analogy

I'm going to give this a shot, even though I have much more to say about it than I care to write in one post. The topic will certainly pop up again.

I mentioned here that the theme I have been building up to in my recent posts has to do with framing. Mark C. explains this concept nicely:

"Framing" is not spinning. And even the most vocal opponents of framing are doing framing in their arguments. It's unavoidable. Whether you like it or not, framing is an inescapable part of communication. Framing is, quite simply, a term for describing the way in which you present information or arguments. If you're communicating, that communication takes place in a frame. The people who advocate framing are simply saying that it's important to consider how you frame your arguments: that the way in which arguments and information are presented affects how they're going to be received.

To draw the obvious parallel, similarly, all mathematics education takes place in frames of our own design, and the way we present mathematics affects how it is received by our students.

Okay, granted. However, it is one thing to consider one's audience and the framing of one's argument. It is quite another to set aside important truths in one's argument and call that framing. This version of framing is what PZ and others have been arguing against:

Now we all know that we have to dole out the technical details appropriately—I've misgauged an audience a few times myself—but our possession of the data is one of our greatest strengths—if we're going to start equating explaining the evidence to puppy-strangling, we might as well hang it up and go home right now. . . . It's like suggesting that we could do a better job of promoting science if we could only hide that sciencey stuff.

Hiding all the "mathy" stuff might very well be described as the central principle of modern elementary mathematics education, and those who promote mathless math education—consciously or unconsciously—have actually managed to convince people that they are the ones best concerned for the future of our children's brains. It's insane from any angle.

Operating inside this "frame" inevitably leads one to hold secretly fast to the assumption that students already know everything—that it is impossible to give them new concepts, new ways of thinking, and new knowledge. Instead we must "connect" everything we teach them with something we presume they already know, or with a way of thinking we presume they have.

Very few seem to have considered the idea that the reason kids are in school is because they don't know anything and their ways of thinking need improvement.

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