Three kids vs math

[minoanmiss]

So I found this both funny and sad.

Today three different second-decade kids tried to get out of math because of their medical committments.

#1 -- after his appointment as they were waiting for paperwork, a 12 year old's mother turned to him and said, "you should go get the bus back to school." He said "it's not that late" and his mother pointed out he would miss math class. He said, "good!" Because all this was right in front of my desk I said, "math is the language of the universe" and his mother thanked me and he pouted hilariously.

#2 -- I was making an appointment for a 16 year old. I named an early morning time and she said "that works!" so eagerly I said, "are you trying to get out of class?" and her mother cracked up laughing and the girl said, "Calculus! I JUST CAN'T."

#3 -- I was writing a note for another 16 year old to excuse him from missing school and he turned to his mother and said, "Now I can go home!" she informed him he was going back to school and he said, "but all I have left is math and it's so BORING!"

And you know, I get it. Math can be very boring especially if one is uninclined to it, and it's not like multivariate calculus will love me for defending it (it sure didn't the first time I ran an eyeball across the textbook). But math is the language the universe is written in and it does make me sad to see so many kids hate it.

I am such a nerd and such a fuddy duddy at the same time, ahahahaah.

Comments

[dine]

math is important, but I would definitely have been one of those kids. for some reason, my brain just doesn't math - might be teachers who didn't inspire, might be my addiction to words and pictures, but I just couldn't get math. I barely survived geometry (only with the assistance of my grandmother, who'd been a math major in college, and then a teacher) and was never so glad as when I passed and could ignore it forever after.

[acequeenking]

I honestly think a lot of it is that math, for whatever reason, is a discipline that doesn't tend to attract a lot of people who are really good at explaining math if they haven't struggled with it before. My high school math teacher was a nice man, but his teaching was "Look at an example, then do the sample problems" and that was it. The best math teachers I've had, on the whole, tend to be ones that were bad at math but loved it enough to struggle through it and learn to teach others (a noble calling but also a relatively rare breed of human).

Then again, I was a very language-minded kid so maybe I just found it easier to relate to teachers who were good at explaining out concepts through every stage versus "Look at the example then replicate it" which other people tend to do well with.

[minoanmiss]

I think you have a really good point here about teaching as a skill

[ex_flameandsong751]

I hate math, but I have dyscalculia. On the other hand, I think "math is the language of the universe" is one of the most beautiful things I've heard lately, though I agree it's hilarious the kid pouted at it.

[acelightning73]

Mathematics is a language my wetware is not capable of using. I failed basic calculus three times in college, with three different professors using three different textbooks, which is why I had to change my major from Physics to English Literature.

And the worst effect of the stroke I had was that I can't even remember my phone number, or do simple arithmetic without counting on my fingers. I had trouble with numbers even when I was a child, but it's a lot worse now. (And once in a while my hands forget how to do something like make pie crust.)

So young me thanks you for getting me out of math class :-)

[amaebi]

Everywhere I've been, most of the teaching and culture of maths has been that it's about emulating a calculator. Not that maths is a mode of thought, not that it's a way of shaping a query to make it analytical-- that it's Methods to Get Right Answers.

Nothing inspiring about that. Nothing language about that.

Chun Woo's elementary school used a program in K-5 that I was stunned by the beauty of. Math Expressions, IIRC. It was really good at having students turn things around and think about them in different ways, and I gather that nearly all the parents loathed it.

Then Chun Woo moved to more standard maths courses in middle school, and the culture of cookery book maths. And when I helped him I persistently leaned into thinking about the meanings of problems and methods, and he lectured me bout how This Was Not the Way. Then he ran himself into a corner in 9th grade studying geometry by himself under shutdown, and there was a weeping debacle over the timed take-home final.

And then he began to hate maths. But because he wanted to go to university, kept going on the maths sequence in high school, honors because he was still relatively good at maths, and hysteresis. And I kept banging on about meaning.

And then lo! in his senior year something clicked. He began to tell me excitedly that now he understood why, when he was in grade school and asked, I said, "It's all about change." And he chose to do Calc 2 in community college during the summer, and was very excited about helping him colleagues. "I talk them through what thing mean!" he told me excitedly.

This is one of the happiest small* payoffs I've yet experienced in parenting.


* Small relative to issues of character or courtesy, for example. And if Chun Woo had no turn for maths, it wouldn't be important.

[redbird]

Reading this comment, I think part of why I came out of high school still liking math may be the teachers, and another part may be the slightly odd curriculum they were using. It was the "experimental" math track per my high school, and "unified" according to the university that promoted it; we got a lot of the standard material, up to calculus, but also propositional logic (in eighth grade), Cartesian geometry (instead of Euclidean), and combinatorics. The school also had a "regular" math sequence, and students who found experimental too difficult (or, I would guess, whose parents thought it was too weird) could move into those classes, which also led to calculus).

[amaebi]

That sounds a lot like the math curriculum chosen students, including me, got to be taught by staff from the company developing it, from when my older brother entered high school to my entry into seventh grade and through eighth grade. It was then killed by the local school board in response to a decrease in school funding: the program cost them nothing, but they wanted to select an external recipient of blame and opprobrium. But it still existed as a nominal option for maths registration for ninth grade, and I was a stubborn cuss and insisted that was what I would register for, and thus began university maths courses in the ninth grade.

Anyway, it was a great curriculum. It was by a non-profit firm called CEMREL. I don't suppose yours was?

[goss]

Heh. Awwwww. <3

I always admire kids who say Math's their favourite subject, as it completely baffled me as a youth. And nowadays, for those who teach Math on our staff, it always seems like a struggle to get their classes enthusiastic about the subject.

[cmcmck]

I'm dysnumeric as you know, so yeah...............

[med_cat]

"Language of the universe" :)

Good for you for speaking up ;)

My mom (who is a math teacher) loves to quote Lomonosov:

"Math should be studied for this reason, at least--because it sets one's mind in order"

;)

[adrian_turtle]

I cannot stop myself from quoting from Rosemary Kirstein's The Steerswoman's Road

In a song called "The Ghost Lover," passed down through generations.
"I lose my days in days of days,
I know my time by nights of yes or no,
In going, stepping into dark,
And standing, marking yes or no..."

"...And she will tell me, when she speaks again:
The cry of stars, the sweet of light,
the secret tongue of numbers.
When last I sang she smiled,
and I will sing again
While all the world and winter rain complete
Until fleeing has no home but her words,
Last known, last awaited, last spoken, last heard."

The secret tongue of numbers. Binary. Decimal. Hex. Whatever you need.

[stranger]

Never had a problem with high school math, took advanced algebra and calculus in college, but when it started getting theoretical and I realized I'd have to learn it like a language, I let it go. I respect it, but I'm not going to bed with it.

A lot of music (including theory, which is vaguely like some math since it's based on real physics when you get down to basics) and history, and a number of human (meaning irrational and irregular) languages later... well, that's what I chose for my life. It makes me happy to know those things.

[magid]

I think the US model of education isn't great for math, because most places have generalists teaching lower grades, and only specialists in upper grades. And a lot of those generalists are folks who don't really love math, but endure it. So a lot of kids are exposed to teachers who aren't enthusiastic (and sometimes not knowledgeable on a deep level), and that makes it harder as things go on. Other countries handle this differently.

[hitchhiker]

there's math and then there's math classes in school!

[cellio]

I loved math despite my schooling, up till the point in university where it got weird and theoretical and I could no longer relate. That's when I bailed (so much for being a math major).

I think part of why I loved it was an early exposure to the right kinds of puzzles, helped along by a father who very much wanted to teach his kids to think. I was doing algebra when I was nine years old but didn't know it was called algebra until years later. It was cool! I had some bad math teachers, but I was blessed with enough of a foundation via my father that my attitude was closer to "you can't hurt me, loser-teacher!" than it was to "get me tf out of here".

I wish more kids had the chance to encounter the fun before hitting the chore.

[lokifan]

I said, "math is the language of the universe" and his mother thanked me and he pouted hilariously.

LOLLLLLL. You're quite right, of course :)