My 10-year-old daughter was rolled in a ball crying yesterday, because of her maths homework. Maths class should not make people feel this way.
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Replying to @DavidKButlerUoA
What an awful teacher! Where did they dig him or her up? The 19th century! Someone needs to take the teacher aside and tell them that "quick math" is no longer the point. Not only that but they should be able to discuss the problems in class as a team. I'm so sorry.
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Replying to @StevenC102431
Mostly I am sad for the teachers because they are doing the best they know. But I am angry that this is the best they know.
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Replying to @DavidKButlerUoA @StevenC102431
Great mathematics pedagogy is extremely subtle, and mastering it takes time, and tremendous resolve; mentors are few, and opportunities to consult them even fewer. Most people have never even seen great mathematics pedagogy, much less had a chance to learn how it works, and why.
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To change this lamentable situation materially would require vast investments in infrastructure, guided by expertise that is in such short supply as to be practically unavailable. Deciding to make great teachers is not unlike deciding to make world-class fighter aircraft.
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This is my sixth year as private mentor to a girl whose mathematical talent is so dazzlingly extraordinary that it still takes my breath away every time I visit her. Math class at school has long seemed to her utterly pointless and stupid. She gave up on it altogether, ages ago.
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As a practical matter, this is the most sensible thing to do. One should just give up. Mathematics instruction should no longer be expected from the schools, just as music instruction is no longer expected from them. Sadly, if you want the job done right, you must do it yourself.
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Replying to @DavidKButlerUoA @StevenC102431
You must help her, alas. There is no practical alternative. The immediate message to convey is that what happens in math class is not math, but rather a painfully misguided mockery of math. Then you begin to convey the truth, as gently and helpfully as you can.
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My own conviction is that the next-most important message to convey is that math takes time, and there is never any hurry. Everyone makes stupid mistakes, even the greatest masters the world has ever known. They don't matter. What matters is beauty: making it, and enjoying it.
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I'd suggest telling your daughter that Leonhard Euler, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, needed seven years to come up with an explanation of a very simple and natural pattern involving ordinary whole numbers. And that Euler made mistakes a six-year-old wouldn't.
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