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A Mathematician’s Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most

Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form by Paul Lockhart, Foreword by Keith
Devlin

Article  in  The Mathematical Intelligencer · June 2014

DOI: 10.1007/s00283-013-9438-9

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A Mathematician’s Lament:
How School Cheats Us Out
of Our Most Fascinating
and Imaginative Art Form
by Paul Lockhart, Foreword by Keith Devlin
NEW YORK: BELLEVUE LITERARY PRESS, 2009, PAPERBACK, 140 PP.,
US $12.95, ISBN: 978-1-934137-17-8
REVIEWED BY TIMO TOSSAVAINEN
aul Lockhart’s A Mathematician’s Lament was origi-
P nally posted in 2002 as a 25-page essay, and it has been
circulating in the mathematics education community
ever since. Since Keith Devlin published it in his monthly
online column on the MAA website in March 2008 [1],
Lockhart’s lament has resonated around the world even
more, and since 2009 it has also been available in printed
form.
It is difficult to review this passionate pamphlet in an
objective manner. Lockhart describes the current state of
affairs in mathematics education as a total failure or even as
a nightmare, and he does so in an exceedingly provocative
way. Even a reader who agrees in principle with Lockhart’s
message may become annoyed with his excessive criticism
that tends to overlook what is realistically possible in
mathematics teachers’ education. What an accomplished
professional research mathematician and a devoted teacher
in one person such as Lockhart can exemplify goes far
beyond what we may expect of the whole educational
system or its employees, the ordinary teachers.
A Mathematician’s Lament consists of two parts. In the
first part, Lamentation, Lockhart argues, often using meta-
phors, that real mathematics has been removed from the
school curriculum and replaced with meaningless mumbo-
jumbo, i.e., rote memorization of mystical symbols and the
rules for their manipulation. The main reason for the
unfortunate situation is that both the reformers of K-12
mathematics education and the contemporary mathematics
teachers themselves ignore what doing mathematics
essentially is all about: an art of imagination done for
pleasure, not a tool kit for surviving in work and society.
Lockhart often exaggerates, but he usually has a point.
Like Schmidt in his review [3], I agree that school mathe-
matics indeed is typically taught without any reference to
its historical and philosophical underpinnings, and raising
this point is especially laudable. By focusing only on the
end products of mathematical inquiry we effectively pre-
clude our students from experiencing the creative side of
mathematics, everything about genuine invention and dis-
covery in it.
In the second part, Exultation, Lockhart continues his
criticism but also demonstrates what practicing the ‘‘art of
imagination’’ could mean in the classroom. The first thing
to do, in his opinion, is to ‘‘throw the stupid curriculum and
textbooks out the window’’ and then ‘‘make up anything
you want, so long as it isn’t boring’’! I read this radical
advice as saying that the customary hierarchical arrange-
ment of the prescribed topics of school mathematics is
artificial to the point of preventing students from perceiving
the true nature of mathematics as an organic whole.
Interesting and beautiful problems arise from free and
serendipitous play of thought, and one solved problem
naturally leads to another.
Lockhart’s examples of such fertile problems are illus-
trative, even if quite elementary. One may wonder,
nonetheless, how far this kind of episodic approach can
ultimately lead if we aim at understanding, for instance, the
real numbers at a deeper level. Moreover, I doubt whether
every student in an ordinary math class is even interested in
becoming an artist of imagination—which is not to argue
that the children were better served in the traditional
approach either.
It would be a waste of time to establish a detailed list of
points on which I agree or disagree with Lockhart. In his
Lament, Lockhart makes a strong case for the creativeness
of a talented individual teacher but I find it more imperative
to query what the education system should do.
Lockhart is content to argue that every mathematics
teacher should possess a personal relationship with the
creative art of mathematics. One may wonder, though, how
such a goal could be achieved without an increased and
more constructive participation of professional research
mathematicians in the mathematics teachers’ training and in
the related pedagogical research [2]. One might, for
instance, wish to establish new forums for mathematicians
who are interested in pedagogical innovations and willing
to report on their teaching experiments. Despite a wealth of
journals devoted to research in mathematics education,
there is a perceived lack of refereed journals that appreciate
the professional mathematicians’ often very pragmatic
point of view and somewhat condensed parlance. Tossa-
vainen and Pehkonen provide a recent contribution to this
debate [4].
A Mathematician’s Lament has hit some mathematics
educators like a bolt from the blue. I suppose, however,
that Lockhart did not set out to seek confrontation, neither
did he pretend to appear as a universal problem-solver in
the didactics of our science. His book is first of all a per-
sonal lamentation that has arisen from his seeing how too
many basics have gone all wrong. Many of us who feel the
same might have reacted differently, but his lively and
persuasive pamphlet is a necessary reminder of how all is
lost if the joy of doing mathematics and the students’ right
to experience it are not at the heart of mathematics
education.
Keith Devlin in his foreword recommends this book as
mandatory reading for every parent, educator, and gov-
ernment official with responsibilities toward the teaching
of mathematics. Moreover, he would have loved to have
had Paul Lockhart as his school math teacher. I definitely
agree.
Ó 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
DOI 10.1007/s00283-013-9438-9
REFERENCES School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education
[1] K. Devlin, Lockhart’s Lament—The Sequel (Devlin’s Angle, May University of Eastern Finland
2008). http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_05_08. Post Office Box 86, FI-57101 Savonlinna
html. Finland
[2] A. Ralston, ‘‘Research Mathematicians and Mathematics Educa- e-mail: timo.tossavainen@uef.fi
tion: A Critique,’’ Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 51(4) (2004), 403–411.
[3] W. Schmidt, ‘‘A Mathematician’s Lament—A Book Review,’’
Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 60(4) (2013), 461–462.
[4] T. Tossavainen and E. Pehkonen, ‘‘Three Kinds of Mathematics:
Scientific Mathematics, School Mathematics and Didactical Math-
ematics,’’ Far East J. Math. Educ. 11(1) (2013), 27–42.

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