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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

#211

Post by tasuki »

blitzar wrote: post #161
Aeolun wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I’m sure most people If you live in the bubble where you experience this, congratulation you live a wonderfully privileged life, never interact with anyone or are totally oblivious to the experiences of all the people you interact with on a daily basis.

You're of course right, it's a privilege.

But also, many people choose to do something they hate so they earn more money. They could be just as privileged and choose not to, just so they can compete with the Joneses and consume more...

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#212

Post by hilbert42 »

tasuki wrote: post #209
hilbert42 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." One of the tragedies of being young is that few have the insight to realize that the 'boring' stuff parents and teachers are forcing us to learn will actually benefit us and that eventually we'll be very thankful that they did. My parents nagged me all the time about studying and ev…

> One of the tragedies of being young is that few have the insight to realize that the 'boring' stuff parents and teachers are forcing us to learn will actually benefit us and that eventually we'll be very thankful that they did. I'm 40. I don't know, perhaps I'm still young. I did not appreciate having to learn the boring parts. Learning things for the next exam so as to forget them in two weeks... I didn't see the…

"…perhaps I'm still young."

Possibly so, wisdom often take years to gel and often only after life events force its notions to the fore.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#213

Post by tasuki »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #188
maccard wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but one of the problems with our civilization is that we typically do the important stuff out of our children's sight, and then come home tired and try to relax. So they do not naturally get a correct idea of what we do.

Yes. Due to an unfortunate event, I'm a single father. My life improved dramatically when I started doing all the chores while the kid was awake:

- We do the chores together.

- Yes it takes ages, but I need to kill the time anyway.

- Then she falls asleep and I can relax.

This is literal heaven, compared to when I played with her the whole day and then did the chores when she slept...

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#214

Post by Viliam1234 »

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

For the purposes of education, it is important to keep in mind that "optimized for performance of a highly trained person" and "optimized for understanding of a complete beginner" are two different things.

I often see people make the mistake of trying to teach inappropriately abstract things to small children, because that's what the pros do, and we want the little kids become pros as soon as possible. Problem is, trying to skip the fundamentals is only harmful in long term.

First kids need to learn what all that stuff means, and then we can proceed to teach them the shortcuts.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#215

Post by creatonez »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #201
creatonez wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

What do you mean by "science" in this context? For example, both biology and anthropology are sciences, but biology can tell us that people evolved from apes, while anthropology can tell us that a specific tribe believes that they were created by a flying serpent. Both of them are sciences, both of them can talk about the same topic (the origin of humans), but they take a completely different perspective on the topic…

Biological and cultural/historical. There is rather strong clinical evidence on the healthcare side of things, and an understanding of intersex biology (including how the the brain develops, not just the classically understood intersexes) shows a complex picture of where various components of gender may originate from on a biological level.

But yes, much of what Foucault taught us about the arbitrariness of being a human in a culture does still ring true. No, it doesn't discount the hard evidence from biology and psychology.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#216

Post by serbuvlad »

somenameforme wrote: post #98
sublinear wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

My first thought when I read sum(x+3, 1, 4) was x+3+1+4.

Also it should be sum(x+3, x, 1, 4) since you need to encode what the iterator variable is as well.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#217

Post by Viliam1234 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #182
raverbashing wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody is really teaching the concept of a symbol in a math class. This was what? 5th grade? What kind of crap teachers never taught that

> What kind of crap teachers never taught that It's rarely the fault of the teachers. The problem is, in many MANY MANY schools, teachers are more like social workers that have to compensate for utter horrifics outside of school. You got a ton of children so poor they didn't have breakfast which means their first (and all too often: only ) meal will be the school-provided lunch (Covid showed that - a bunch of schools…

I taught at a nice middle-class school, so most of the problems you mention were not relevant there. And yet, it seemed like half of the kids' families were either recently divorced or in the process of divorce. I couldn't really blame those kids for not paying attention to school. And this seemed like the best case, so probably at most places it gets much worse.

Education has a problem with scaling, especially at the elementary level. Sometimes people figure out a nice solution, but when you tell them "great, and now do this in every village" the problem becomes obvious. But there are kids in that village, too, and you want them to know reading and math and hopefully also something more.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#218

Post by sightbroke »

seethedeaduu wrote: post #114
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…

Oh yeah let's turn otherwise fun hobbies into a forced chore, that will surely be great for the kid. Forcing kids to learn to spell when they have learning difficulties (eg dyslexia) doesn't usually go well either it's just causing suffering for the kid.

> Forcing kids to learn to spell when they have learning difficulties (eg dyslexia) doesn't usually go well either it's just causing suffering for the kid.

I greatly valued the tutoring that I received for that (personally wish it had not been cut short). I was somewhat fortunate and received one-on-one tutoring in a secluded room.

They provided me with clearer definition of rules (instead of sayings like "i before e...", proper phonetics, and a history of where English came from.

That said, there's research into trying to determine which children with Dyslexia should receive specialized treatment as a segment just cannot learn to read at all.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#219

Post by Viliam1234 »

jand wrote: post #131
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!"

As we are sharing anecdotes: One of my school math teacher had the same approach in another way: We were expected to use greek letters, not latin ones. Same reasoning: It showed us kiddos that the letter was insignificant compared to the concept expressed by the letter. So my take would be: Your friend taught the students for the first time what they were actually doing while handling equations with "a letter in it".…

I saw a textbook that used a picture of a box in the equation. The number is hidden in the box, and you are supposed to figure out which number it is.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#220

Post by Viliam1234 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #72
zmgsabst wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always found that an indictment of math education — and spent many, many hours discussing it. When teaching addition, workbooks commonly use a box, eg, “[ ] + 2 = 5” — and first graders have no conceptual problem with this. Somehow, we lose people by the time we’re trying to formalize the same concept in algebra. There’s been many times I’ve written a box around letters in a problem and asked students “what’s in…

Go from "[ ] + 2 = 5" to writing it "box + 2 = 5--what is box?". Then "b + 2 = 5--what is b?" then "x + 2 = 5--what is x?".

Basically, don't teach the new concept and the new syntax both at the same time. New things should be introduced one by one.
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