Glen Thoughts

Let’s do a bit of an experiment today, shall we?

Say we have two well educated, intelligent people, both of who did very well in school, but each had one subject that they struggled with and just plain didn’t get. Now, imagine them each saying the following things:

Person A: I really can’t read much. I mean, I was good at it in elementary school, but when the books stopped having pictures I couldn’t do it anymore. And really, what’s the point? All the best books are movies now anyway.

Person B: I really can’t do math. I mean, I was good at it in elementary school, but when letter started showing up I got to confused. And really, what’s the point? I have an accountant to do it all for me now anyway.

Hopefully reading Person A’s thoughts made your skin crawl. But what about for Person B? In the last few years I’ve heard many, many people say just that about mathematics.

For students I can understand, because really they are still young, naive, and probably full of confidence issues. That’s fine, I can deal with that. However, what really, really bothers me is hearing adults say it, especially my fellow teachers.

I understand that math can be very abstract and difficult to grasp, especially at a high level. But so can literature. If I entered a room full of educated people and said that I didn’t get Shakespeare, they would turn there noses up at me, but if I entered that same room and said that I didn’t get Grade 9 Algebra, do you think that I would get the same reaction?

If not, then really, why the heck not? Why are the subjects treated so differently? How is it okay to be bad at math but not at reading?

But I guess if I had the answer my students would do a heck of a lot better..

Until next time,

G

P.S. 13 down, 4 to go!

Tags: 17 posts, math, sad

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Rants, Teachin' and Learnin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.