91–100 of 437 posts
And then your kids and their same generation would be replaced by their peer kids from hard working boys and girls from India and China. Unfortunately curiosity only works with brilliant minds. Normal minds plus curiosity is useless.
Even with a "normal" mind. Train consistently to gain excellence!
As someone who just finished school, I’m trying to figure out how to get genuinely interested in mathematics. I’ve never been particularly strong at it, yet I’m planning to enter a university program that demands a high level of math. The problem is, it’s hard to motivate myself to study math for its own sake. For example, I loved learning programming because it’s hands‑on—I can build something and immediately see th…
Turns out, the one who didn't like math didn't like the game either, and the one who did like math liked the game too.
So I'm not totally convinced you can just "trick" kids into liking maths, tho for sure it's a way to get them to exercise.
[0] Scopa: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopa
> 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!"
And then your kids and their same generation would be replaced by their peer kids from hard working boys and girls from India and China. Unfortunately curiosity only works with brilliant minds. Normal minds plus curiosity is useless.
As kids get older, they need to learn how to struggle and overcome struggles. (I would still caution against "forcing" math.) But yes, you need to start engaging hard work and determination.
Btw, the two are not mutually exclusive. Young children should be praised for struggling at things so they begin learning that skill, too.
That's true only until their senses are not shut off and attention is not fixated on screens. Exploration happens only when you have unused attention, sensory capabilities and need for a bit of hard work and risk-taking. Curiosity is less of a biological feature. It is a product of the need and the available resources (senses etc). All of these are missing now.
There is no need or motivation. And there are no available resources (senses, attention). There is no justification for exploration and hard thinking.
> 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.
This was what? 5th grade?
What kind of crap teachers never taught that
> 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.
Interestingly mathematical symbols in the past also regularly evolved. Then at some point we just stopped doing that and get stuck in a time which is arguably no longer especially appropriate. So we're left with rather inconsistent symbols, oft reused in different contexts, and optimized for written communication.
It's still literally just a math test/quiz, but somehow the context changes everything and even kids who really aren't into math were loving it, and also improving rapidly because the repetition helps instill intuition.
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…