How is this different than saying "paper and pen has been known to work, has been debugged, and doesn't suffer from frivolous cutting edge theories... so why build typewriters... so why build computers... so why innovate from that which already works?"
Your argument is the antithesis of the reason for hackernews!
The difference is that typewriters and computers are better than pen and paper in many ways. The "new math" being taught at many middle and high schools in the US is not better, from a pedagogical perspective, than the existing math.
In many schools today, math is taught as a "holistic" subject, where algebra, geometry, trigonometry are intermixed and taught as a "integrated" whole. In theory, this would let students appreciate that there are many ways to approach a problem and that the same theorem can be proven via many methods. In practice, all it ensures is that students have an insufficient background in three subjects rather than thorough knowledge in one.
Bruce Lee said, "I do not fear the man that has practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man that has practiced one kick 10,000 times." What our schools are doing is teaching different "kicks" (mathematical skills) but without following it up with the necessary practice required for students to achieve mastery of those skills. What we end up with are kids that know of mathematical theorems and mathematical results without knowing the results themselves.
Yes but I doubt the first, second, or even 100th typewriter was less applicable to most situations than pen and paper. Same goes with computers. And same goes with new innovations/theories within education.
Maybe the issue isn't with the "frivolous" theories but rather with the treatment of them. As in depend on empirical evidence through studies prior to applying them to a wide student base. The first +-10000 light bulbs weren't released to the public. Why are new educational methods?
Heh. The ghost of Sam Clemens might beg to differ:
"Among the first users was Mark Twain, who fiddled around with it before putting it aside. Yes, Twain did become the first person to submit a novel in typed form to the publisher, but that wasn't until much later ("Life on the Mississippi,"1883) , and he didn't type it himself... it was a typed copy of his handwritten manuscript."[1]
That manuscript was produced at least 8 years after the first Remington model appeared. Although Clemens was clearly a technophile (and pal of Tesla), he considered the first models to be curiosities rather than immediate replacements for pen or pencil and paper.
I don't think Sam Clemens used Typewriter version 0.0001. I think he used version 0.8-1.0 or so. I'm just arguing that these mathematical methods are closer to version 0.0001 and shouldn't be used mainstream until more studies have been completed.
Your argument is the antithesis of the reason for hackernews!