TULSA'S  MALEI MATHEMATICAL LEARNING   CLINIC

CONTEXT OF OPERATIONS:

The MALEI Clinic is a not-for-profit function of Tulsa's MALEI Mathematics Institute. The Clinic's activities include: (1) providing specialized professorial instructional services in mathematics, for residents of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, metropolitan service area; (2) conducting research pertaining to personal educational health in mathematics; and (3) development and conduct of mathematics instructional programs that demonstrate how major findings from clinical research can improve the healthiness of educational practices in mathematics.

The Clinic is conducted through the Institute's (MACS) Project for Teaching and Learning Mathematics As Common Sense ... to the learners, themselves. The MACS Project seeks to advance professional knowledge about how humans most naturally learn mathematics ... and why American students have so much difficulty with the American core-curriculum in mathematics ... and what can be done to prevent or overcome such difficulties.

Students' difficulties with the mathematics curriculum are not because they lack personal mathematical aptitude (everyone has plenty of that) ... and not because mathematics is difficult to learn (it is easy to learn, when it makes personal common sense) ... but because the American scholastic mathematics curriculum has not been scientifically designed to make its mathematics fully commonsensible to students. As a result, the curriculum is largely non-commonsensible ... and forces students to try to memorize vocabulary, facts, and processes that make little or no sense to them. Children who do not do that well are falsely led to believe that math is just too hard for them to learn. That self-image commonly undermines their potentials, their educational progress and their adult lives.The American mathematics curriculum presently is not a healthy one.

The MACS Project is concerned primarily with enabling humans to learn school-level mathematics, quite naturally, as personal common sense. It helps pave the way upgrading the American curriculum to become much healthier for American youth and adults. But until that happens, the MACS Project seeks to lay the groundwork, and to generate complementary educational mechanisms that enable Americans to bridge over the non-sense flaws in the curriculum.

In mathematics, personal educational health is all about the adequacy of the individual's personal mathematical comprehension. Mankind's mathematical comprehension of anything is a body of concepts and facts about such things ... internally organized through a human, "common sense" logic which is held and used, in-common, by all functional adults. All children begin to develop such personal mathematical theories at the same time that they are learning to talk in a spoken language ... long before they start school. Their "common sense" logic is naturally acquired and used as a diamond in the rough. As children grow, their personal mathematical theories become increasingly reliable and precise ... partly because their logic improves as their language improves. All three ... language, logic, and personal mathematical theories ... progressively get cleaned up. They often are trimmed and honed and polished to become very sharp and brilliant. But for most folks, it is quite enough to get them in shape for effective personal use in whatever life styles they want and can accept.

The American mathematics curriculum largely fails to provide students with the commonsensible personal mathematical theories that they need ... even just to mathematically comprehend lower-school mathematics (below high school levels). As a result, more than half of American adults are in very poor personal mathematical health ... being math-fearing, math-illiterate, or both.

Within the above context, the roles of the MALEI Clinic are: (1) to enable participating Tulsans to achieve and sustain personal mathematical health; (2) to advance professional knowledge about how humans most naturally develop genuine personal mathematical comprehension; (3) to surface the maladies of curricular instruction ... with regard for its failures to impart mathematical comprehension ... and to demonstrate reliable means of repairing those flaws; (4) to investigate the nature of personal mathematical health and factors that enhance or suppress it; (5) advance the science of mathematics-learning, within the context of personal mathematical health; (6) develop and locally activate leading-edge educational programs that demonstrate (a) the mathematical-health benefits of comprehension-education in mathematics, and (b) that, and how, scientific clinical research can pave the way for rapid, genuine improvement of American educational practices in mathematics; and (7) to produce a nationally replicable model for instructional-research-and-development clinics that can likewise perform such functions.

THE MATH DISTRESS SYNDROME:

In the American curricular tradition, students' malcomprehension of earlier topics progressively undermines their mathematical comprehension of later topics. Their mathematical comprehension continues to lag ever further behind the pace of the curriculum. So, when climbing the very long ladder of curricular mathematics, most students needlessly find continued learning of newly encountered topics to be increasingly difficult - woefully prompting most students to get away from mathematics courses, as soon as they can.

Even worse, recurrent malcomprehension commonly turns into Mathematics-Learning Distress (MLD). Once MLD sets in, continued curricular pressures for scores, grades, and credits commonly cause MLD to escalate into "math aversion" and "math anxiety" and "math depression" and sometimes even into "math phobia". In effect, the student is continually being pressed further outward along a mathematically shaky limb ... a bit like walking an emotional pirates' plank.

It is quite common for MLD to steadily escalate from early childhood, onward. When malcomprehension seriously impairs children's abilities to perform as expected in their curricular mathematics programs, the children are aware that they are just not "getting the picture" well enough to keep pace with the curricular schedule for "par" learning.

It is almost as commonplace for MLD to traumatically arrive, nearly instantaneously. Many children (for a while) continually achieve scholastic success with the mathematics curriculum by simply obeying the textbooks and the teachers who follow those books. Their perceptions of "understanding math" is actually an understanding of the data-processing programs which they are expected to execute ... as if they were human substitutes for electronic computers. They often are not even aware that they are not actually "getting the picture" of whatever the mathematics is actually talking about. All is well until they reach a curricular level that requires a notable level of conceptual/mathematical/rational understanding. Suddenly, their "monkey see, monkey do" tactics no longer can keep up ... and their performance level crashes ... and MLD skyrockets.

In between those two scenarios is a more torturous one. Many children early perceive that school mathematics sometimes very commonsensible ... and correctly presume that it always should be commonsensible, and that it often is not ... and mistakenly presume that when it is not, there must be something wrong with themselves. But they also learn that they can save face by "faking it" ... just training themselves to to what is expected, even without knowing what they are doing, or why. For them, continuing up the curricular ladder means ever increasing dependence on "faking it" ... and escalating awareness that the growing comprehension gap is threatening a future performance-breakdown and the consequences, thereof. That is when MLD reaches the "anxiety" stage. If and when such a breakdown actually happens, MLD passes on to its "depression" stage ... where feelings of inadequacy set the stage for lifelong fear of math.

Oddly enough, many MLD victims of the latter kind suffer because their minds simply are too mathematical to cope with a non-sensible "math" curriculum. Their minds functionally insist on "getting the picture" ... and become confounded by anything less than that. These are the creative/analytic/theoristic kids who are bent on making their own decisions, calling their own shots, playing their own games, marching to their own drums, and managing their own lives ... potential leaders and scientists who are being discarded by non-commonsensible curricula.

After the students, themselves, become internally aware of being unable to digest curricular mathematics into personal common sense, negative emotional reactions begin to multiply. Malcomprehension nurtures distress; distress inhibits comprehension; and MLD snowballs. Scholastic self-confidence is weakened – academic self−esteem is deflated — and educational potentials are suppressed.

Meanwhile, instead of knowing that they are victims of poor curricula, students are mistakenly led to think that "mathematics is difficult" or that they are personally lacking in mathematical aptitude. Unarrested, MLD can become a horrendous barrier to effective pursuit of educational or career aspirations. The adverse effects of MLD can be devastating to students, and later become seriously detrimental throughout their adult lives.

Partial or full recovery from MLD is a direct and automatic result of the learner being eductively led to commonsensibly reconstruct ... through their own reasoning ... the same curricular topics that previously confounded the learner. As the learner's commonsense comprehension progressively overcomes past malcomprehension, the learner's growing awareness that the gains are coming through his or her own mathematical reasoning gives a major boost to academic self−esteem and to scholastic self−confidence. That boost is amplified as the learner also acquires many power−tools for mathematical learning. The learner's personal mathematical competence so improves - as do interest, motivation, enthusiasm, and personal potentials in mathematics. It happens best when the patient is not concurrently enrolled in a curricular math course.

Clinical instructional therapy for strong-to-severe MLD has been described as a special kind of "academic psychotherapy." Results of that kind might take weeks ... and cannot be done by counselors who are not versed in graduate-level mathematics and in the scientific psychology of mathematical comprehension. That is why the MALEI Clinic is Tulsa's only source for MLD therapy.

MATHEMATICAL LEARNING:

Woven through MALEI Clinic's private and workshop programs is a theme of experiential education in how to learn mathematics. That also is the major focus of one of the Clinic's MathLab workshop programs. A small investment into learning HOW to learn mathematics can yield great future returns ... in easing the struggle, in increasing future success, and in keeping open the doors of opportunity.

Student's difficulties with curricular mathematics are largely because they have not been educated in how to learn mathematics. The American core-curriculum demands that all American students learn at least lower-school mathematics ... up to the high school level ... but does not educate them in how to learn it. Without the know-how, students cannot effectively manage their own learning ... and for them, the learning passively happens accidentally (if at all).

Lucky students learn ... from their families, associates, communities or cultures ... some good things about how-to-learn mathematics . But sometimes, the learning methods that children are taught are exactly the wrong ones ... leading toward future disasters. Most students learn what little they do learn ... about how-to-learn mathematics ... from whatever they experience in math classrooms. But American math books do not teach methods of learning mathematics ... and most teachers of mathematics have never been taught those methods.

There is an art of learning mathematics ... and it is the art of learning mathematics through reliance on personal common sense. Mankind has created mathematics through exercise of common sense,That is the humanly natural, healthiest, and most nutritious way for students to learn mathematics It is the mathematical way of learning mathematical information ... which why the MALEI Clinic is a mathematical learning clinic.

There also is a related art of making personal mathematical sense of curricular textbooks, presentations, discussions, assignments, etc. The basics of both arts are easy to learn, but the curricular version cannot be learned until one has a feeling for how to learn, mathematically ... and how it differs from non--mathematical ways of learning mathematical information. Through jobs, media and other sources, we often are fed mathematical information which presently makes no personal common sense to us. Such non-mathematical learning often is the best way for quickly learning mathematical fragments that are immediately are needed for some purposes. But it is the worst way to try to climb the core-curricular ladder. It is much like the difference between a pile of bricks and a house that uses some bricks.

Because the American mathematics curriculum makes so little common sense to students, they must rely quite heavily on non--mathematical learning of bits and pieces. But when they try to build upon that rock pile, it crumbles because it cannot carry the weight.

The word, "mathematics", literally means an "art of learning by thinking." In street language, it means gaining additional knowledge by exercising "common sense" to create ideas and to draw conclusions about things. The word, "educe", literally means "to draw out from within." The phrase, "education in mathematics" means causing one to learn something new, by using common sense on what already was known.

Students' inability to digest curricular presentations of mathematics into personal common sense is the primary cause of under-achievement and MLD. But students can acquire mathematical-study skills for grasping the commonsensibility of the curricular topics. In the MALEI programs, those skills are developed mostly by how mathematics is learned in the clinical instructional programs. But in some cases, clinical instruction focuses directly on specific analytic tools for dissecting curricular elements for digestion into personal common sense.

LOCAL INSTRUCTIONAL SERVICES:

The MALEI Clinic's instructional services presently are provided at the Green Country Events Center, 12000 E. 31^st St. in Tulsa.

             

The Clinic offers a mathematical-health program of private instructional services for families or for individual youth and adults. Also, it presently offers two kinds demonstration-education workshops. Normally, participants pay fees for professorial services. Free services are provided only for persons who are participating in the MACS Project's special program-development activities.

Private instruction normally is for the prevention or treatment of Mathematics-Learning Distress (MLD: apprehension, anxiety, aversion, fear, depression, phobia, etc.). But private clinical instruction sometime is used also for mentoring students who have unusual potentials for excellence in the mathematical arts. Private instruction is done in 1 or 1.5 or 2 hour sessions, by appointment only ... arranged through telephone call to 918-836-6284. Interested persons should contact the Project by telephone call to 918-836-6284 ... or e-mail to office@mathelite.org ... AFTER reading the Mathe-Lite Project's flyer at http://mathelite.org/pdf-flyer-1.htm Free private instruction is offered through the Tulsa-OK Mathematical Literacy Project ... but only for educationally disadvantaged adult victims of strong-to-severe MLD.

The Clinic's MathLab Workshops program is for teens who want and deserve stronger education in the arts of mathematical learning ... than what they can get through curricular programs or tutoring. These non-tutorial workshops are for thoughtful, creative, analytic students who are not necessarily "gifted" ... but who are willing to apply some efforts into doing "mathematical research" and "publishing". The mathematical topics are selected from the American mathematics curriculum. Interested persons can get on the announcements mailing list, by e-requests to clinic@mathsense.org. There are no free seats at MathLab Workshops.

The Clinic's Adult-And-Child (AAC) Math Workshops are for adults who want better ways of math-coaching lower-school children. These are internship programs for the adults ... the children are there to help the adults. Parents, teachers, tutors, volunteers, etc. bring children to the AAC workshops so that they can have "hands-on experiences" in applying basic principles of effective math-coaching for developing children's mathematical comprehension. Interested persons can get on the announcements mailing list, by e-requests to clinic@mathsense.org. Free seats at AAC Workshops are offered only through the Tulsa-OK Mathematical Literacy Project ... but only for adults who are willing to cooperate with that Project's program development efforts.

                       

SPECIAL FEATURES OF MALEI'S CLINICAL INSTRUCTION:

• Because clinical services require professorial expertise, they are not elsewhere available to the Tulsa public.
• No service contracts or special assessment fees - assessment is a continual part of the services.
• Clinical services are for mathematical health and fitness of all individuals – not just students' scholastic performances.
• The Clinic builds functional mathematical intelligence – as rational knowledge and powers of mathematical reasoning.
• Education in mathematical methods of learning greatly increases personal mathematical potentials.
• Laboratory-learning develops personal mathematical comprehension by providing conceptual understanding.
• Learning mathematics as common sense prevents or reduces "math distress" (anxiety, depression, fear, etc.).
• Clinical eductive instruction makes mathematics commonsensible, by guiding learners to rely on their own reasoning.

HOW TO ENROLL:

Private instruction: The MALEI Clinic's service program begins much like in some medical clinics.

• Call for an appointment for a no-cost orientation conference – about 20 minutes to discuss the program and your eligibility to participate.
• Learn about the philosophy, psychology, goals, and methods of clinical mathematics instruction.
• Determine your eligibility and interests for enrolling – if "yes & yes", fill out application forms.
• Negotiate a personalized plan for instructional services.
• Schedule the first instructional session & get prescription for what should be done before then.
• Allow enough time, in case you want the first instructional session to be right after the orientation.
• Bring any materials that will help explain your interests and needs [notes, books, guides etc] ... and any calculators already owned.
• If being financially sponsored by some individual or organization, bring all necessary forms.

Workshops:

Except for the Tulsa Math Literacy Project, the MALEI Clinic presently does not market pre--scheduled workshops. Instead, each workshop must be organized by some Tulsa-area adult or organization who wishes for the workshop to happen. That organizer provides one adult who will function as coordinator for the workshop. Prospective coordinators should contact the MALEI Clinic ... tel: 918-836-6284 or e-mail: clinic@mathsense.org ... to explore potentials, preliminary goals and guidelines ... and to develop a publicity and recruitment plan.

TOP]

GENERAL FEATURES:

• Format for private instruction:
  
  • Clinical mathematics instruction is a one-on-one or family service, conducted as a series of instructional sessions.
  • Each session runs for a minimum of one hour, but often longer, depending on the client's needs.
  • For children under 12 years, a parent must participate in each session, and monitor exercises between sessions.
  • Sessions are held at least once each week, for consecutive weeks, depending on the client's needs.
  • Sessions are individually scheduled, normally at least one week in advance.
  • Regular meeting times can be scheduled, allowing for occasional deviations.
  • Clients should carry cell phones for confirming or adjusting meeting times or places.
  • Between sessions, participants are expected to follow the clinician's prescribed exercises.
  • Needed between sessions: e-mail communications and access to word-processing and slide show programs.
• Format for workshops:
  • Normally, each workshop meets in at least one 90-minute session per week, in consecutive weeks, for at least four consecutive weeks, for 7-20 participants.
  • Frequency of the sessions, and duration of a workshop program depend on the agreed goals.
TOP]
• Costs:
• The MALEI Clinic is a not-for-profit community service – service fees are well below costs of providing clinical services.
• No charges for registration or initial assessments
• Normally, there is no need for special textbooks. Other supplies are inexpensive: loose leaf binders, filler paper, etc.
• All participants need calculators – models depend on mathematical levels being studied.
• Scholarships might be available from cooperating organizations.
• Work-study credits sometimes allow for volunteer work in exchange for mathematics instruction.
• Service fees are reduced to match Tulsa-area market rate for services of college professors.
• Professors's fees are the same for private instruction as for conducting workshops
• Standard service fee is $70.00 per contact hour, rounded down in 20 minute intervals.
• Fees normally are payable at the end of each session, by check, money order, or cash.
             Make checks payable to The M.A.C.S. Project. The MALEI Clinic is not yet set up for credit/debit cards.
TOP]
• Faculty:

Funds permitting, the Clinic has up to five professorial clinicians. Each is expected to have doctoral level education in some area of mathematics instruction, and professional expertise the psychology of mathematical comprehension. The rest of the Clinic staff consists of paraprofessionals and administrative personnel. The clinical team is headed by a Director – who also fills in for other staff, as needed.

Present Director of the Clinic is Clyde L. Greeno, MALEI Institute Clinical Professor of Mathematics Instruction. He has served the MALEI Clinic since 1980. He was formerly a university educator of mathematics teachers and director of numerous government funded mathematics education projects – and has taught mathematics at community college, baccalaureate college, and university undergraduate and graduate levels. His first clinic was an internship program for teachers of mathematics. He also has been a mathematics teacher at the elementary, middle, and high school levels – and mathematics curricular program analyst for a state government – and served as consultant for publishers, school districts, and state and federal governments. An active leader in national professional circles, he often represents the MALEI Institute as an author and speaker at professional conventions.

TOP]

Background Information About the MALEI Clinic:

Status:
The MALEI Clinic operates under the (MACS) Project for Teaching and Learning Mathematics As Common Sense (to the learners, themselves). The MACS Project is commissioned and sponsored by the American Institute for the Improvement of Mathematics Learning and Instruction, an Oklahoma chartered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization for mathematics educational service and research – a.k.a. The MALEI Mathematics Institute.

The Clinic's office is in Tulsa, but presently is not accessible to the general public. Clinical services presently are provided at the Green Country Events Center, 12000 E. 31^st St. in Tulsa.

Sociology:
The MALEI Clinic provides mathematics instructional services for Tulsa-area residents, but also has additional local, regional, and national roles:

• Personal development: The Mathematical Learning Clinic newly presents a human-needs perspective on education in mathematics. By directly focusing on personal educational health and fitness in mathematics, the Clinic champions personal development in the mathematical arts of rational thinking and comprehension. Personal mathematical development includes gaining whatever mathematical knowledge and skills are personally needed – but also gaining the perspectives, methods, and powers for future learning, mathematically.
  
• Local demonstrations: Clinical casework reveals much about how class-instruction in mathematics could become healthier and more effective for students and teachers. As one means of sharing that information, the MACS Project generates various kinds of local demonstration educational programs. One is the MALEI Clinic's program of private instruction and its two kinds of mathematics workshops. Another is community education program being developed through the Tulsa-Ok Mathematical Literacy Project.
  
• A national model: The MALEI Mathematical Learning Clinic is the nation's only "math clinic" of its kind. Patterned after the clinical methods used in the fields of medical and mental health, the MALEI Clinic's focus on personal mathematical health and fitness expresses the cognitive and affective importance of conceptual understanding, mathematical comprehension, and personal powers for rational mathematical thinking. Its services include the nation's only clinical program of comprehension therapy for mathematics-learning distress. The MALEI Clinic is potentially a model for replication by universities throughout the nation.
  
• National educational progress: The MALEI Clinic's instructional service programs are backed by extensive scientific research into how humans most naturally learn the mathematics of modern daily life and of the core-curriculum. The research discloses much about why American youth and adults have conceptual difficulties with American core-curricular mathematics – and about curricular changes that could progressively improve nationwide educational productivity in mathematics. As resources permit, findings from MALEI Clinic research are shared with various appropriate communities – teacher educators, educational researchers, teachers, and the general public.

History:
Tulsa's MALEI Clinic is a Tulsa sequel to some earlier precedents.

• From IIT: The prelude to the MALEI Clinic was a "mathematics remediation clinic" briefly conducted at Illinois Institute of Technology, in 1969. Under NSF funding for innovative teacher education programs at IIT, an experimental internship program for pre-service mathematics teachers featured clinical casework with mathematically troubled inner city youth. The professor and interns used eductive instructional methods so that the clinicians could research the casework to discover the causes and cures for the students' mathematical difficulties. The teacher education process was reported to a national convention in 1970. By 1975, several other universities had clinical internship programs, and a national professional "clinical" organization was created. The IIT clinical findings were successfully applied in inner city high schools, in 1970-72.
  
• From Honolulu: After serving in a Hawaii state government position, the IIT clinician opened the first MALEI Clinic to the general public, in Honolulu, in 1978. During its first eighteen months, the Clinic served many out-of-school adults who were serious victims of "math anxiety/phobia", but whose careers demanded further education in mathematics. His clinical use of eductive instructional methods provided the needed mathematical comprehension, but also was effective therapy for the anxiety. A local clinical psychologist confirmed that eductive instruction is closely parallel to psychotherapy for other kinds of anxiety. By 1980, it was certain that Mathematics-Learning Distress is a serious nationwide problem, and that clinical research could effectively address it. [The book, "Overcoming Math Anxiety", was published in 1978. By 1980, it was a best seller – confirming that the problem is severe and nationwide.] On that basis, the MALEI Institute was incorporated, in Hawaii, as a not-for-profit housing for the Clinic's educational research and service.
  
• In Tulsa: MALEI operations were relocated to Tulsa in 1986, but became dormant until a 1989 publication by the National Research Council alerted the nation to its "mathematics problem". Although clinical services were occasionally offered, they did not become financially feasible until 1996. In 1997, the MALEI Institute was reincorporated in Oklahoma, for purposes of providing scientific leadership for national educational progress. The Institute immediately prompted creation of the MACS Project as an exploratory venture for determining how best to pursue the MALEI Mission. The MALEI Clinic was re-activated as a MACS Project "mobile" activity sponsored by the Institute, during the Exploratory Phase of Institute operations in Tulsa.
  
  By 2010, it was determined that the MALEI Clinic can be of greatest service to Tulsa and to the nation, by concentrating on the personal educational development needs of mathematics-suppressed adults and youth, and of mathematically precocious students. The MACS Project's plan for the 2010-2014 Activation Phase of Institute operations calls for upgrading the MALEI Clinic to become a permanently established educational service for the Tulsa community – while concurrently accelerating national educational progress in mathematics.
  

Psychology:
Learning is a psychological process – and instruction can serve only to guide the learning. Knowingly or not, instruction always is a case of applied psychology – regardless of how much or little the instructor knows about that psychology.

• Mathematical comprehension: There is a scientific psychology of how the human mind mathematically comprehends whatever it attends – and that psychology is the basis for all truly clinical instruction. Being short of instincts, every human naturally depends on reasoning processes commonly called "common sense". Viewed scientifically, "common sense" is a rational process of learning by theorizing with information which already is known. Every human is naturally a theorist – and is totally dependent on personal abilities to rationally learn new things by theorizing – even if that is done only internally, even subconsciously. Mathematically comprehending is a special (somewhat picky) version of using common sense – and the resulting personal mathematical theories are the learners' mathematical comprehension of whatever those theories are about.
  
• Conceptual understanding: Personal mathematical comprehension begins with knowing what a mathematical theory actually is talking about. Even without it, students commonly train themselves to perform as required by curricular mathematics courses. But that kind of behavioral training relies on a psychobiology of non-rational learning driven by rewards and punishments. In mathematics, behavioral training cannot effectively substitute for common sense achievement of concepts, facts, and methods – because mere "parroting" fails to produce the conceptual understanding needed for genuine mathematical comprehension.
  
• Affective development: Sociological factors commonly influence personal perceptions about relationships between mathematics and the self. Young children often are judged with regard for the mathematics that they appear to know – "good at math" = "bright kid"; "poor at math" = "slow kid". They early begin using those equations to judge their peers and themselves. They soon sense adults' expectations for their scholastic performance – and evaluate themselves, accordingly. They often are aware of when a mathematical item makes common sense to them – and "aha" builds their scholastic self-confidence and academic self-esteem. They also might be aware of when a curricular presentation fails to make common sense to them – which undermines scholastic self-confidence and academic self-esteem. Positive or negative attitudes toward mathematics are rooted to what kind of successes did or did not happen while trying to follow curricular instruction.

Philosophy:
Mathematics instruction always is based on the instructor's own orientations – what kind of "education" in what kind of "mathematics", why, and how.

• Mathematics: The word "mathematics" has differing meanings for different persons. Unfortunately, for most Americans it means the kind of challenges normally met in curricular courses called "mathematics." That curricular kind of "mathematics" has not served the American public, well. Because it often is non-commonsensible, it cannot serve as a context for clinical instruction for personal educational health and fitness in mathematics. Instead, the Clinic relies on a more real-world kind of mathematics – a humanly natural, rational art of using "common sense", as refined to differing degrees of mathematical maturity, and on which professional mathematicians rely.
  
• Education: The word, "educe" means "bring out (from within)". Not all kinds of "education" are done by such eduction, but clinical mathematics instruction is distinguished by eductive education ... often called "guided discovery learning". Eductive mathematics instruction guides the learners to achieve mathematical knowledge through their own reasoning – rather than being told the same information by "authorities." That heuristic process provides the clinician with the best possible information about what the learner actually knows and does not – and about how the learner thinks – so that the clinical can better guide the learner's mathematical development. But in mathematics, eduction also produces a stronger, healthier, and more lasting kind of education. (1) It gives maximum assurance that what is learned is commonsensible to the learners, themselves – quite contrary to the kind of education that students normally glean from traditional curricular experiences with mathematics. (2) It guides learners progressively to internally develop their own, cohesive, personal mathematical theories – which are far more useful and lasting than mathematical fragments that are merely memorized. (3) In the process, it strengthens their personal powers for mathematical learning – and for critical thinking, in general. (4) The guided process of theoristic learning induces a far more realistic appreciation of what real-world mathematics is all about – as an art of mathematical learning. (5) Eduction guides a high-success mode of learning, sometimes taxing, but routinely gratifying – imparting a far more realistic appraisal of personal mathematical potentials.