I’m at Disney World with CJ, on a Pirates of the Caribbean-style ride, a car careening through a tunnel. On the wall of the tunnel there are math posters, the kind you’d see in a high school classroom, about Pascal’s triangle, conic sections, etc. And I feel sort of annoyed and depressed, because I know that Disney is going to make a big deal about how educational this ride is, but actually, nobody except me is looking at the posters, nobody who didn’t already know the math could get anything out of the posters, the way the car speeds down the track.
Please interpret and derive relevant policy prescriptions for math pedagogy in comments.
Dizznee probably got the ride classified as a charter school — state ed funds, big tax break.
If they wanted to make the experience pedagogical, they could ask Fermi-type questions at the end: “estimate the number of toilets at Disney World?”, “how fast did the car actually go through the tunnel?” etc.
By the way, the posters shouldn’t be in the tunnel but next to the line-ups so that people talk about these issues while they wait. Promise an answer in a poster at the other end of the ride.
Don’t go to Disney World to learn math?
Life imitating bad dreams …
http://emilytalmage.com/2016/01/20/trust-us-its-for-the-kids/