Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't force your kids to do math

blog.avocados.ovh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 437 posts

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#151

Post by hilbert42 »

I'm damed sure I'd be much worse at math if I'd not been pushed in a formal environment such as a school classroom.

I liked math—especially calculus as it made sense to me—but parts became a drudgery when I could see no reason for studying them.

Right, there's always the kid in class who excels at math like a mini Euler and gets bored because the rest can't keep up but the majority of us aren't like that—doing Bessel functions and Fourier stuff as abstract mathematics without any seeming purpose can seem pointless and our only interest in them was to pass exams. (Teaching may be better these days but my textbooks never discussed the value of learning these aspects of mathematics.)

Later whilst studying elec eng/electronics it became very obvious to me how important these aspects of mathematics were. If I'd been given some practical examples of why this math was useful then I'd have been much more enthusiastic.

Same goes for the history of mathematics, I'm old enough to have had a small textbook full of log and trig tables yet if someone had asked me at highschool who John Napier was I wouldn't have had a clue. In hindsight, that was terrible.

Mathematics is often taught as if the student was going to become a mathematician à la Hardy or Ramanujan and I'm firmly of the belief this is not the best approach for the average student let alone those with few math skills.

Mathematics ought to be taught with the real world in mind for ease of understanding. For example, it's dead easy to represent AC power as a sine wave and from there use that mathematical fact to solve power problems. (Perhaps maths and physics texts should be written in tandem and synced to show relevance.)

Teachers need to take time to explain that math isn't just abstract concepts but that it's very relevant to everyday life and that tying up mathematical functions to things in the real world is actually interesting and enjoyable.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#152

Post by kleene_op »

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…

That was exactly my sentiment.

My parents pushed me hard to do piano when I was around 10-12. After a year that went pretty well I was starting to get lazy and put very little work and investment into preparing for the next lesson. They still had me play piano a full year until they eventually gave up and bitterly told me what a waste my resignation felt to them.

20 years later, I got back to playing piano, and I can't thank my parent enough for having me to continue playing in my teenage years. Because it only took me a few month to be able to play pretty advanced piano sheets compared to some of my relatives who are struggling with the basics starting it in their adulthood.

Same for maths. I feel that a lot of people like the author of this blog post are being extremely misdirected thinking math can and should be taught in a fun or amusing manner every time.

Sure, a lot of topics in Maths can be made more digestible by "gameification" to help younglings develop an intuition. But a very big part of Maths actually requires you to sit down and painstakingly crunch down the numbers/equations, memorize and learn when to apply the correct methods to solve some problems. And even though this part can feel fun and engaging after a while, you can't expect children to exhibit such interest right of the bat without having them first struggle with the classics.

Kids don't know better. Your role as a parent is to navigate along the fine line of forcing your kid to get good exposure to the (boring) activities we adults value and letting him enjoy what he enjoys. Only in doing that will your kid open up to the world and grow up into a functional human being.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#153

Post by [deleted] »

blitzar wrote: post #145
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the kid isn't enjoying the piano lessons, will forcing them to do it for 20 minutes every day really be beneficial? Sure, they will now be able to do something - something that they absolutely hate... (also, why is it always piano that parents try to force on children?)

> they will now be able to do something - something that they absolutely hate A valuable life skill if you want to ever have a job or get paid.

[deleted]

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#154

Post by maccard »

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…

I don’t have kids.

The really important part of this is that kids mimic what they see adults they like and respect doing. If their role models spend 6+ hours in front of the television every night, that’s what they’ll do. If their role models are playing music or sport, that’s what they’ll want to do.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#155

Post by Aeolun »

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…

So now you have a kid that’s really good at playing piano but absolutely hates doing so. Mission accomplished?

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#156

Post by creatonez »

eastbound wrote: post #128
paganel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world needs less Asian kids being forced to play piano since a very early age and it needs more kids (Asian and not only) that are left to explore the world. Without that exploration the kids won't make the world their world, at best they'd only make it a bad approximation of what we, our (older) generation, best think that that world should be.

Any proof of why it is best? I prefer to live among educated people, thank you. I prefer my peers to go through forced history lessons, forced math lessons so they don’t tank my government, and biology lessons so they don’t tank the health system. Yes they won’t be able to determine their gender, but that will give me grandkids, thank you very much. Same goes for piano or sports. Yes we need to pull people upwards, o…

> Yes they won’t be able to determine their gender, but that will give me grandkids, thank you very much.

All that praise for education and yet you've fallen for the tabloid-fueled conspiracy theory that transgender science is a hoax

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#157

Post by Aeolun »

blitzar wrote: post #145
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the kid isn't enjoying the piano lessons, will forcing them to do it for 20 minutes every day really be beneficial? Sure, they will now be able to do something - something that they absolutely hate... (also, why is it always piano that parents try to force on children?)

> they will now be able to do something - something that they absolutely hate A valuable life skill if you want to ever have a job or get paid.

That’s such a depressing way to see things. I’m sure most people do something they don’t utterly despise, is only because they select for their local optimum.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#158

Post by maccard »

sublinear wrote: post #81
WalterBright wrote: post #63

> Without realizing it, he was doing algebra. A friend of mine taught remedial math at UW to incoming freshmen. She would write: x + 2 = 5 on the blackboard and ask a student "what is the value of x?" The student would see the x, and immediately respond with x means algebra, algebra is hard, I cannot do algebra. So she started writing: _ + 2 = 5 and ask the student to fill in the blank. "Oh, it's 3!"

The semantic meaning of a blank is much better understood to everyone than an arbitrary letter like 'x'. People just want to know why it's x and not something else or how a letter can have value. They might even think how can 24 + 2 = 5? They just want something to grab onto and nobody is really teaching the concept of a symbol in a math class.

I don’t recall the exact age, but when I was doing math in primary school (somewhere around age 9/10) we were absolutely using symbols - “Paul has two apples, and the basket can hold 10 apples. How many more apples can Paul put in the basket” is the same as 2 + x = 10

We did these sorts of problems for a long time, with addition/multiplication/fractions, and even when we started doing actual algebra the problems were introduced the same way “let’s look at a problem we’ve solved already, and write it in a different way”.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#159

Post by ykonstant »

milesrout wrote: post #139
paganel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world needs less Asian kids being forced to play piano since a very early age and it needs more kids (Asian and not only) that are left to explore the world. Without that exploration the kids won't make the world their world, at best they'd only make it a bad approximation of what we, our (older) generation, best think that that world should be.

Kids left to their own devices don't explore the world. They play video games and scroll on social media.

If that is the world you are providing, that is the world they will explore.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#160

Post by Ekaros »

alpaca128 wrote: post #125
CommenterPerson wrote: post #37

Compare learning math to learning to bicycle. There is some some sweat and struggle that needs to be put in, before one "gets it". After this it can become enjoyable. I encouraged my daughter with practice exercises from a young age, but tried to avoid making it a drudge. She built up confidence and did well with it. She is also very hands on creative. She decided to study engineering and is working towards her PhD.

Those aren't nearly comparable. Riding a bike is one simple skill and as long as you're not racing that's enough for most people. Meanwhile learning maths is a years-long effort at best. I learned how to ride a bike within an hour by myself when I finally had a good reason to learn it. I can't say the same about maths.

Bike is fabulous self-correcting vehicle in most operation conditions. The trick really is just to learn to trust it when it is moving. And then what to do when it stops.

Math is layers upon layers upon layers. And then it also branches. Never really had willpower to learn it myself alone.

Post reply on HN