For Hubert, what mattered was how they arrived at their answer, not what the answer was. In many schools, science teachers may get involved in the lesson by raising environmental issues concerning water conservation, and a technology class might devise ways to stop the leak. Yet Miller is ambivalent. But I'm troubled by the notion that there are no right answers. . . . No, they don't, says Joseph Rosenstein, a Rutgers math professor who helped pioneer the state's new approach to math instruction.
Schools still do that.
But, on the theory that students learn best when they discover information for themselves, teachers increasingly want students to solve problems, work in groups, and write essays. The focus is on process, not answers, and Rosenstein says he helped create the FANS program so that parents will come to understand that. Students may not be able to do this now, but we expect that they will be. As the parents were told that night, the standards are not easy. Seeking to introduce even young students to calculus, for instance, they suggested that fourth-graders use a calculator to compute the number of times that 1 must be doubled to reach 1 million, as a way of investigating number patterns.