Overheard: Oklahoma Department of Education

Last week I had the opportunity to interview Derrel Fincher, director of learning technologies at the state Education Department, about the future of education. One of the things we talked about was the switch from learning specific content to learning how to solve real-world problems. An example he gave was using math to solve engineering problems instead of simply learning math formulas. He talked about how people sometimes just say, “Oh, well, I’m not a math person.” It’s true! I hear people say that all the time. While this quote doesn’t really fit into my story, I absolutely love it:

“Nobody goes around and says I can’t read, but it’s perfectly acceptable to go around and say I can’t do math.”

Preach it, math man!