Lily James

Here's my embarrassing math thingy. For grade 1-4 I went to a
work-at-your-own-pace school with cubicles for the kids. We had workbooks in
the subjects and we set "goals" for ourselves each week (under the eye of
the teacher) and then worked to meet those goals... etc. For some reason, I
completely missed the fact that there were "correct answers" to the math
problems, or if I did know this, I didn't know I was supposed to be giving
them. I mean, it was pretty dire. I was a very VERY very introverted child,
nothing to say, own little world, all that.

ANYWAY, :) I could not do math correctly in school. That is, I could not
produce the correct answer, because I was fiddling with the answer according
to my own weird agenda. For example, if the answer was 456 I would take one
away from the six and give to the four, making it 555. If it came out to be
556, I'd give the extra to the third digit first, then the next time that
happened the second (565), then the next time the first (655), then start
over. I had other weird little games like this and I did it in my head so
there was no evidence on the paper. So, ALL of my answers were wrong every
time, without fail. I went to tutors who played dice games with me, etc.,
and reported to my parents that I was fine. But because of this I failed the
third grade.

There was just a massive disconnect somewhere between me, my parents, and
the teacher. Had I opened my mouth and explained what I was doing, that I
was some sort of little three-digit socialist, it would have been fixed I
suppose. After fourth grade (which was actually third grade again), they
took me out of the school and put me in a parochial school with regular
classrooms and I perked right up. I think the main problem with me and math
was that the "goals" set for me were way too unchallenging and I was bored
out of my mind, just searching for a way to make things more interesting.
It's hard to remember because I was so nonverbal at the time -- what was I
thinking?

I continued to have some difficulty with math because I could do the answer
in my head but not on the paper. I remember wondering how in the hell to
make those numbers string down from the problem, doing long division, it
just seemed like a lot of extra mess when I knew the answer. This became a
problem again in high school algebra/trig/whatever with the old "SHOW YOUR
WORK" imperative that I could not answer. :) In college I did fine with
calculus etc.

I think my experiences in grade school are the main motivating factor in my
trying to homeschool my kid. I remember so vividly the overwhelming boredom
of pages and pages of math problems in their neat, military little lines,
stretching out ahead into the weeks and months of the school year. Blech.

And on that cheery note!

Love,
LILY

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Fetteroll

My math experience is probably the opposite of most people's. I enjoyed math
so much that I had the vague impression I'd always been good at it. Then I
stumbled on my grade school report cards and it reminded me I hadn't liked
grade school math and was a pretty solid C student.

The numbers and the tediousness of early math got to me. The one thing that
got drilled into me was being precise was the most important part of math.
If there were patterns to arithmetic, they got lost in making sure all the
numbers were doing exactly what they were supposed to.

(That was a tough lesson to unlearn, especially since it got reinforced in
college engineering classes. I didn't unlearn it until I was an adult and
forced to do math in my head and realized I didn't need precision to the 6th
decimal place. Being close was good enough. In fact estimation is way more
useful than precision. But estimation -- though we were *told* it was an
important skill -- was merely a chapter in the math book and then we went
back to getting answers right to the umpteenth decimal point. In fact
estimation made no sense at all in the context of math class. Why would
anyone want to do the problem twice? Once to get a rough answer and then
again to get the right answer? Just double the tediousness.)

Then I hit algebra and the emphasis shifted to pattern recognition and I
soared :-) All the way through from Algebra to Trig it was nothing but
recognize the problem type, apply the appropriate formula and voile!
Elegance :-) I absolutely adored Geometry proofs. (Which apparently they
don't even do any more.) The proofs were like games to me. In fact I see a
lot of parallels between geometry proofs and answering homeschooling
questions. The procedure is to take someone's thinking step by logical step
from where it is to where it needs to be to understand how children learn
naturally. Q.E.D. :-)

I adored college math, especially calculus and differential equations. More
pattern recognition and apply the formula.

But when it came time to use the math for practical purposes in engineering
courses I was befuddled. I didn't really understand why I was doing what I
was doing. The problems weren't elegant in engineering. They were messy with
bits and pieces of different problem types mixed together. I ended up
graduating near the bottom of my class (the worst of the best :-) and the
only thing that got me as high as I was was math, art, psychology and
programming. Rather crude programming with computer cards, but programming
nonetheless and it saved me from a career in befuddlement because
programming is just geometry proofs :-)

It wasn't until I started helping my daughter figure out real life problems
that I "got" arithmetic. I could finally see the patterns. Since we were
doing all the math in our heads, we couldn't keep track of all the
intermediate answers so I had to tear the numbers apart and rebuild them out
loud for her into numbers that would add or subtract easily. And from
listening to me do that she "got" how numbers worked. She can see the
patterns that it took me until adulthood to see.

My husband teaches algebra and modern math courses and occasionally brings
problems home that are puzzling him. He'll walk through them using the
concepts he's trying to teach and words that I've lost the meaning for. He
uses the same techniques I used all through school of trying to figure out
how the formula fits the pattern of the problem. But I can see the problems
differently now. I can see essential patterns in the problem itself without
being clouded by the formulas.

Joyce