The Thirteenth Yearbook: The Nature of Proof (NCTM Yearbooks) [Paperback]

Harold Pascoe Fawcett (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 146 pages
• Publisher: Natl Council of Teachers of; New ed of 1938 ed edition (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873534026
• ISBN-13: 978-0873534024
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,975,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A timeless curriculum, March 28, 2001

By 

Joshua Zucker (Menlo Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Thirteenth Yearbook: The Nature of Proof (NCTM Yearbooks) (Paperback)

This short book discusses the purposes of proof in high school geometry, and concludes that one of the major roles is not being fulfilled: students do not learn how to apply logical reasoning skills in life outside the geometry classroom.

The author then presents a curriculum designed to emphasize the transfer of logical reasoning skills to everyday real-world problems. In addition to having *students* write definitions of terms like "triangle", and recognize the need for undefined terms like "point" and "line", he asks them to define terms like "restaurant" for the purpose of analyzing a state law on sales taxes to be collected.

While the amount of geometry covered in such a curriculum is undeniably less than what you'd see in a standard text, it is abundantly clear from the discussion that students will remember what they've learned for far longer than they would in a typical geometry class.

Left unanswered are questions about what expertise would be required of a teacher who tries to manage this type of curriculum.

It's also interesting to compare this curriculum reform with modern trends; this book, which reads quite a bit like it comes from the recent constructivist movement, was first published in 1938!