COMMENTARY : NEW CURRICULUM CAN'T REPLACE MATH.

Byline: James Bemis Special to the Daily News

Blaise Pascal knew it. Sir Isaac Newton knew it. Even Plato the philosopher knew it.

So why doesn't the Simi Valley Unified School District know it?

What the ancients knew that the school district administration does not is that there are no shortcuts to the rigor and discipline of a good education in math. In fact, much of the profit of learning mathematics lies outside its practical benefit.

The Simi Valley school district's latest foray into educational disaster is the teaching of math through ``cooperative learning,'' accompanied by textbooks that make ``Sesame Street'' read-to-me books look like scholarly journals. The fifth-grade text is so infantile that a first-grade teacher showing up with that book at any self-respecting private school would be laughed off campus.

The new curriculum's benefit? The children like it. (I'll bet they would like eating pizza and watching Disney videos during class time even more, which is why we choose adults, not their peers, as our kids' teachers.)

Plato, in Book VII of ``The Republic,'' argues that the discipline and logic of learning math provides dual benefits, teaching not only the pragmatic lessons of counting and figuring, but also serving as a means for the search for absolute truth through logical deduction.

His point is well taken. The value of math lies not only in its obvious functional use but in teaching us how to think rationally. The reasoning skills learned in math, acquired through rigor and training, help us to bring order to the natural confusion in which the mind finds itself. Through reason, we find understanding in a world of chaos.

Building a comprehension of the various disciplines of math is like constructing a house. In the earliest stages, a foundation is built to support the improvements to come. The rest is added brick by brick, each step supported by the brick beneath it and supporting the brick above it. One level must be completed before the next one is started.

The sort of mental discipline required to learn math is for most, admittedly, often a painful and laborious task. But in the difficult groping for understanding of abstract concepts, an ability to reason grows. This use of the analytical process, like any other training, develops through vigorous exercise. It must be challenged in order to reach its full capacity.

For thousands of years, arithmetic, geometry and the related math subjects have been taught in a pedagogical manner, with the teacher (not the ``facilitator'') imparting the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors to the next generation, who learn much of the material by rote and repetition. This method has not only led to the brilliant achievements of the great mathematicians like Euclid and Pascal but, in some ways more importantly, has provided millions of average people with the skills needed to function in their daily lives. It works.

But the school district administration has a better idea. By lowering the standard, facilitating (rather than teaching) ``cooperative learning,'' and using ``fun'' materials, they believe they can create a new system, superior to the old and tested methods. We can be sure that with the new math no one's self-esteem will be damaged. We also can be sure that very little learning will be going on in the classroom.

Those provided with a solid math grounding in the past received more than an ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide; they got a hard-headed course in logic, making them very hard to deceive. My grandfather didn't graduate from high school; but he never got fooled by anyone trying to sell him something for nothing.

Because of its incremental nature, it is impossible to excel in higher mathematics without a sound training in the basics. Worse, without it a generation will have missed its education in deductive reasoning, one of the most valuable gifts our ancestors have left us, leaving them putty in the hands of those skilled in manipulation. Ah, the virtues of progress.

The ``Sesame Street'' approach to education offered by district administrators combines all the benefits of past failure with the advantages of unproven experimentation. Yesterday's lessons are being thrown over for today's new theories. One thing we can count on: With the new math's dumbed-down curriculum, Simi Valley fifth-graders will soon make Bert and Ernie look like Archimedes.

MEMO: James Bemis is a Simi Valley resident who contributes commentary columns on a regular basis.