Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers has entered the blogosphere, and right off the bat has started a couple of very important discussions on the pedagogy of elementary mathematical topics (specifically logarithms and linear algebra). You can read my contributions here and here.
Those following the harmony debate and my discussion of music pedagogy should pay attention, as some of the same issues (in particular the damage done by a lack of an appropriate level of theoretical sophistication) are involved.
(Fortunately the situation is a somewhat less severe in mathematics, if only because students concentrating in that subject do eventually get to see it done properly in “advanced” courses. The situation would be analogous in music if every music student, perhaps after sitting through a year or two of harmonic theory, had to take a course in Westergaardian theory at the 300- or 400-level. )
