”THE MOOR” AND ITS AUTHOR
Aurelio Baldor: he was Born in Havana, Cuba, lawyer and mathematician who wrote a text from 1941 terrifies and excites millions of students from all over Latin america.
Algebra de Baldor is the book most consulted in the colleges and schools in all of America, it is even more read than your own don Quixote . Its author, Aurelio Angel Baldor, has nothing to do with the Arabic that appears on the cover of his best known book, but with the youngest son of Gertrude and Daniel, born on October 22 1906, in Havana.
“Aurelio Baldor was the educator most important of the island of Cuba during the forties and fifties. He was founder and director of the College Baldor, an institution that had 3,500 students and 32 buses in the street 23 and 4, in the exclusive residential area of Vedado. A quiet man, and huge, in love with teaching and my mother, who survives, and who spent the day devising math puzzles and games with numbers,” recalls Daniel, and evokes his father walking with their 100 kg of weight, and his proverbial height of one metre ninety-five centimeters through the corridors of the school, always with a cigarette in the mouth, reciting phrases of Martí and with their algebra under the arm, which then, in place of the portrait of the sage arab intimidating, lucia a sober cover red.
But the problems for the family, Baldor began with the Revolution Castro, who were forced to flee the country. A hot afternoon of September a picket line of revolutionaries was to the house of the professor in order to stop it. Only a contraorden of Camilo Cienfuegos, who had been a student of Baldor, saved him from going to prison. “We're going on vacation to Mexico, he said my dad. We met at all, and as if it were a kind of geometry we explained with pinpoint accuracy how we had to prepare ourselves”.
On July 19, 1960 arrived to the aztec capital. Aurelio Baldor he was agitated and restless as if his feeling was that he never would return to his island and that he would die far away in exile. His other fear was that the money that were only reached for a few months. The sales of his books could not help you, because twelve years ago he had sold the rights of his algebra and arithmetic to Cultural Publications, an editorial mexicana, and had invested all that money in your school.
The Baldor resided in Mexico for a few months and then moved to New Orleans, to end up living in New York. While in Havana, the revolutionary junta declared the nationalization of the College Baldor, and the expropriation of the house of the director, who served for years as a school revolutionary.
FAR FROM THEIR HOMELAND
Aurelio Baldor tried in vain to recover his life. Went to English classes, along with their children at the University of New York, and in the short time since he gave classes in Saint Peters College, in New Jersey. His sons finished the studies, but none followed the path of the math.
However, the master could not be happy outside of Cuba. On 3 April 1978, he closed his eyes and slept for ever, in exile, far from their nostalgia for Cuba and their school.
MY CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE BOOK
I'm still recommending the use of the book of Baldor, compared to those labeled as outdated, old, or what is sometimes referred to as a simple workbook that teaches the student to mathematical procedures and not mathematical concepts. This new current educational poorly named constructivism, does not understand the student math concepts and also teaches them how to solve them, which makes the student is helpless against any subject that involves an operation math.
My teaching experience is extensive, it tells me that at certain ages, it is best not to convey abstract concepts, but that we must teach on the contrary ideas are very tangible and concrete. So the Baldor is a perfect tool for learning, even if it is mechanical, math. And, once you are mastered certain techniques, basic math, you can ask the student his reasoning and a vision that is more abstract and profound of the process itself. You can't build a great building but are well made the foundation, and that foundation can't be based on reasoning elevated, but they have to be robust and strong, and that is achieved mechanically. Does anyone has arisen the mathematical concept of the multiplication tables?, does someone who is not a mathematician has raised the concept in depth of the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division?. Sure, the answer is no. What discredits that your learning? What it is necessary to understand everything, or is it more important to learn all that?
The cure for many ills in studies of subjects numeric in Spain would be with the practice and use of books of Baldor, and especially the volume more significant, Algebra. I understand that there are many mathematicians who doing work deeper look relegated to anonymity, while Aurelio Baldor writing a simple book has been and will be at the peak of popularity. It is logical that generate a major grudge, but on top of that there are to assess the work of this master, and assess his legacy, and above all to understand to whom they are addressed his books.
MY RECOMMENDATION
“All of those who want to improve your mathematical basis, do not hesitate to use the Algebra de Baldor, it is the best book to learn algebra elemental. Us in M3P Classes we use the order that the student with a mathematical basis poor to acquire the resources needed to improve in any subject numerical”.
