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Don't force your kids to do math

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Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#101

Post by greggsy »

somenameforme wrote: post #99

Oddly enough I found a great 'trick' for this. Kids hate doing math tests, but turn it into a competition and game and suddenly they love it. Print out a bunch of remedial problems, perhaps 50. And then give them 1 or 2 minutes to do as many as they can. It's just a contest to improve against your own scores over time, with prizes for the kids who score the highest after a month or whatever. It's still literally just…

There’s a fine line between chores and games.

Imagine having to move a round thing around some other people to get that thing into a square frame. Then, imagine that you can only use your feet!

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#102

Post by laurent_du »

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will stop after 1 year and conclude they are not good at music. Same for sport. Same for reading books. Same for maths. And you know what? It's your fault. You chose to be lazy and complacent and didn't push them because it's hard to be a good parent. And now you expect me to validate your laziness? Nah.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#103

Post by lukan »

laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

Different point of view: do you consider hunting in the wilderness to be difficult?

I do, it requires being still in miserable conditions for a long time, being cold, wet, mosquitos, and then usually still no success, but frustration.

But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it.

"children sense your true passions and naturally want to join in"

And that is my experience as well. But if you stop childrens curiosity out of limited time and patience "Be quite now!" - stop them from helping, because they are not a help in the beginning and you are faster on your own - then of course they won't just start enthusiastically some years later doing with motivation whatever it is, you define as their arbitary target now.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#105

Post by jblecanard »

lukan wrote: post #103
laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

Different point of view: do you consider hunting in the wilderness to be difficult? I do, it requires being still in miserable conditions for a long time, being cold, wet, mosquitos, and then usually still no success, but frustration. But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it. "children sense your true passions and naturally want to join in" And that is my experience as well. But if yo…

There is a huge difference between pushing your kids to overcome their current limits and forcing them to do something they do not enjoy at all.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#106

Post by clove »

le-mark wrote: post #24
jerkstate wrote: post #11

ChatGPT makes it so easy to build a lesson/workbook for something your kid is interested in. I've used it to build workbooks on special relativity, tsolkovsky's rocket equation (including euler integration to build a scratch program), triangulation, logic gates, probabilities of simple dice games, etc. My pro-tip is to tell the LLM to format the document in LaTeX, so you get beautiful math typesetting. You don't even…

Where can one learn more about this? I want to get some activities for my kids this summer…

Me too.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#107

Post by lukan »

jblecanard wrote: post #105
lukan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different point of view: do you consider hunting in the wilderness to be difficult? I do, it requires being still in miserable conditions for a long time, being cold, wet, mosquitos, and then usually still no success, but frustration. But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it. "children sense your true passions and naturally want to join in" And that is my experience as well. But if yo…

There is a huge difference between pushing your kids to overcome their current limits and forcing them to do something they do not enjoy at all.

There is indeed a difference between giving a slight push and "forcing" which is what TFA is talking about.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#108

Post by pxeger1 »

chasely wrote: post #69
hahamaster wrote: post #43

I tell my kid that math is a language. You learn to speak it, just like you learn to speak any other language, slowly, by listening, understanding, speaking, intuitively recognizing patterns, rules and exceptions. When you start to become fluent you translate problems into math and solve them. At school they keep trying to make them memorize useful phrases, like a tourist that goes to Paris and learns how to say "whe…

> and learns how to say "where's the bathroom", "hello", "would you like to sleep with me", "thank you", "goodbye" Quite a story condensed into those five phrases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Marmalade

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#109

Post by guerrilla »

lukan wrote: post #103
laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

Different point of view: do you consider hunting in the wilderness to be difficult? I do, it requires being still in miserable conditions for a long time, being cold, wet, mosquitos, and then usually still no success, but frustration. But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it. "children sense your true passions and naturally want to join in" And that is my experience as well. But if yo…

> But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it

Uhh then your knowledge is very limited because that is rather well documented. Also, why are you saying "savage" like an 18th century racist? Is that in fashion again?

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#110

Post by lazystar »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #100
somenameforme wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This becomes even more true in higher level maths where programming language style functions would make everything vastly more clear, and easily typeable, than the traditional Greek symbols. sum(x+3, 1, 4) is just so much more clear (and consistent when generalized across other operations) and practically as concise as the mathematical way of expressing that which I cannot even type. Multiple variables would be a bit…

The formal language of math is intensely optimized for rapidly communicating with yourself 90 seconds in the future, when doing a proof or calculation, turning paper into working memory. It does seem silly to use the same language for communicating with others across unkniwn but deep chasms of context. Its remarkable that it works at all

its silly. itd be like introducing first year programming students to advanced maps/filters/anonymous function syntax, instead of the easier to understand for loops and if/else statements. math's "no true scottsman" approach to teaching only hurts itself in the long run.
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