I know what you’re thinking, but no, I don’t have a gambling problem. I was referring to the current system of math education in our schools. I managed to avoid the game completely for the last nearly 20 years of home schooling my youngest daughter, Megan. Oddly enough, although I’m not the best at math, I managed to raise and educate her right into an early math degree. Go figure.
Of course, I can’t take credit. There was just no stopping Megan when it came to math, from the very beginning. She could barely talk when she started figuring out how numbers worked, and she couldn’t ask me enough questions. I’d be flying down the freeway between Sacramento and San Francisco and hear her small voice from her back car seat: “Mommy, is two times three six? “ I’d respond, and her next observation would be, “Then four times three is twelve, right?” This level of evaluation was coming from her when she was still in preschool. Math was play for her. It was a game, but not like the game to which my title refers, not like the one the schools play. For Megan, it was a fun game. For a lot of kids in school , including my granddaughter, Kaela, the math game is not fun. It’s more like the kind of game Katniss Everdeen is thrown into in the currently wildly popular series of Hunger Games books and movies, an intense and scary fight for life requiring every bit of wits and strength the players can muster, a fight to the death. (I just read that last part to Kaela, she doesn’t think I’m being overly dramatic.)
Seriously, they’re asking these kids to learn operations and concepts that the average person will never use, unless she decides to go into science or engineering. Kaela does want to be a Marine Biologist, so she’s motivated. She’s also motivated by peer pressure; she doesn’t want the embarrassment of being put into a remedial class, so she fights to stay at “grade level”. I don’t want to see her burn out, or learn to hate math. How ironic to think that what kids may be learning is to hate the subject being taught, or even to feel stupid or incompetent. Whenever Kaela starts to seriously doubt her intelligence and ability, I try my best to let her know she has what it takes, that she’ll get there, she’ll learn what she needs to know, when she needs to know it. She doesn’t have to do it all “their way”. She just has to keep trying, do her best, and play along. I remind her they’ll keep giving her the same darn lessons all through school and until she gets to college.
Here’s what the current math system makes me think of: potty training. When a tiny baby is born, you know that eventually she will learn to go potty on a toilet, not in her diapers. Do you start putting her on the potty the day she’s born? I suppose you could. I’ve heard of some people who do start putting their babies on the potty at, say, 6 or 8 months of age. At some point a baby that young may actually void her bowels and bladder while she’s sitting there. Or, you could just wait until she’s 18 months old or so to introduce the whole idea, give it a few days or weeks, and there you have it.
I love math, and I love school. I’m still taking classes and probably will for the rest of my life. Whether home schooled or in school, it’s important that a child feel confident and happy. Learning happens better that way, and life’s just too short to be miserable.
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