Experience suggests that the institutions alone will not address the concerns, because those involved have long ago accommodated the status quo.  No matter the intent, the concerns are so hard to acknowledge that faculty and administration evolve to a necessary level of comfort.  To address the issue of entrenchment, a commercial business infrastructure, Second School Community Centers are designed to be located near college and university campuses.  This business will focus on enhancing the comprehension of individual students so that they are successful in the freshman mathematics classes, not by tutoring but through a psychological process.  The business process will provide a supporting role to colleges by supplying demand side learning materials and research on methodology. *<*>

Demand side theory is different in all respects from supply side theory.  <*>

The best way to get an handle on what the demand side theory implies is by contemplating the Socratic Method (see also *<*>) and comparing this method to the typical classroom pedagogy. 

The "demand side theory" takes a step beyond the typical interpretation of the Socratic method and shifts responsibility for instruction from the professor to the student.  The facilities optimal to support this shift is discussed below in the section titled, "support structure". <*>

The student is guided in developing an individualized capability and in assuming responsibility for knowing what he or she knows and does not know.  This is accomplished using a topic mapping activity described in Lifting Strategy.  The blank paper test is then an individualized composition of topics prepared for presentation to the student. 


Each topic may be exposited using proper notation, some description of theory and or examples, including applications of the topic. 

Ideal support, demand verses supply side learning

Most colleges and universities have adopted a pure supply side approach in supporting freshman instruction in mathematics, often because no viable alternative has been demonstrated.  Our current effort is dedicated to making viable the practices of a demand side theory.

The challenges are great.  Students who are not comfortable with either the pedagogy or the curriculum.  In many under served colleges the standard tools may not be in place. It is perhaps unbelievable to realize that these tools include well constituted class enrollments, chalkboards or white boards, air conditioning, and support from the administration.  Professors are often under paid and classrooms overcrowded.  Faculty are treated as employees or worse. In many colleges the faculty endure almost slave plantation conditions with very authoritarian administration.  These conditions degrade the quality of learning. 

In theory, the standard approach to freshman mathematics is justified in much the same way that supply side capitalism is justified.  The existence of poverty and other social forms of injustice are either ignored or justified. 

In authoritarian supply side environments, knowledge is supplied without taking into account the interests or judgments of the individual student.  This may seem to be reasonable, particularly when the system regards the individual students as being somehow not able to reach a higher level of synthesis.  Clearly students do not often know what they want from freshman mathematics, but is this the students' fault?

The excesses seen in the American credit crisis of 2008 are seen also in supply side education.  The excess results from control over institutions by a few, where those few may not really have the interests of the many in mind.  Consequences often include inadequate classroom resources, low pay for professors, overly large and costly textbooks, and disenfranchisement of individual students and professors. 

In summary, the system, professors, textbooks and testing organizations; is largely disconnected from the world of the students. 

An example is in order.  Many colleges have a hierarchical notion of college governance, where each level of the hierarchy is fulfilling private agendas.  Faculty members in these institutions are controlled, and through hiring and firing practices the faculty body becomes passive and unable to support innovations.  Clearly, a demand side theory of education will have difficulty within this settling. 

The philosopher John Dewey developed a philosophical foundation that now serve as a pure model of supply side educational theory.  This thesis is complex, involving the notion of empiricism, the limitations that might be found on the scientific methodology and the nature of authority.  It is also necessary to talk about the nature of the particular and the universal and machine encoded ontology.  In essence, the thesis suggests that the American system of education justifies many current practices based on what is called pragmatism but which is really supply side.   The role of the individual learner is made sub servant to the authority of the system. 

Failures of supply side systems are not without context.  The development of capitalism with structural balances between supply and demand must be considered as very advanced ideal.  Democratic capitalism demands this balance, and clearly we have not as yet manifest perfect balance in this kind of social structure.  Capitalism cannot mean that we systematically ignore social value.  The context; therefore, has to do with a difference between a good system that is wasteful and a more perfect system where human endeavor is enhanced to a greater extent. 

Support structure

What is the ideal support for demand side instruction with a mathematics curriculum? 


Section 2: Description of a proposed web environment

Section 3: Abstract, system theoretic, description of demand side education

Section 4: Principles of academic governance, shifting the practices from supply to demand side

Section 5: Current practices to be transformed

Section 6: The Second School Community Centers  <*>

Section 7:  National Program