
Why Do So Many Gifted Kids Think They Don't like Math? - tokenadult
http://www.talentigniter.com/blog/why-do-so-many-gifted-kids-think-they-dont-math
======
gatlin
Humble brag: I was declared "gifted" in every area except mathematics
throughout school; I switched schools once and retook the test leading to some
kind of broad-er exposure to the process. The tests to determine mathematical
giftedness were overwhelmingly masturbatory exercises in symbol manipulation
and memorized algorithms. For a long, long time I thought arithmetic _was_
math. I was told that I would not make it to AP Calculus, let alone get a
math-related career. (See my profile for the exciting conclusion to this
story).

Math was rote memorization and regurgitation of algorithms which I had trouble
memorizing without explanations of how and why they worked. Later on I found
out the answers to these questions are called "proofs," they are very
fundamental to mathematics, and I am quite good at them. I did not excel at
the math I was given because I was plagued with foundation questions about why
any of this added up (sorry) logically and they were blockers to true
understanding for me. Logic was completely missing from the curriculum.
Digested mathematical trivia were handed to me like I was some kind of
_child._ I was never given the power tools I wanted to build my own knowledge,
perhaps for fear of my safety or my innocence.

People who were good at studying and taking people's word for things sailed
through and to this day can't prove things rigorously. These kids don't like
taking things apart.

It was only during some education electives I took that I realized that a well
known problem in STEM education is the group of students who are intelligent
but have rather slow, idiosyncratic, and methodical ways of assimilating new
information. Imagine the quantum of solace that gave me.

I chose Computer Science at random from an admissions catalog because I liked
writing programs even though I was "bad at math," and because I couldn't
afford film school. 4 years of discrete math, modern geometry, multi-variable
calculus, linear algebra, and algorithm classes (on top of other fun but not
as fun-damental courses) later and I realize what a load of boring and
disingenuous shit public school math was.

 __*

Why do so many gifted kids think they don't like "math?" Because "math" sucks
and schools don't let kids build things anymore - materially or otherwise.

[Edit] Grammar, new insights, the sort of thorough editing I should have done
the first time.

~~~
pasbesoin
Corresponds with my opinion: The curricula are crap and many educators at best
mediocre in the topic. No wonder the "smart kids" are frustrated.

P.S. I remember hitting calculus in college and drawing the "hard" professor.
("Oooh", people exclaimed sympathetically.) I pulled an A+ and enjoyed the
course, because the professor _knew and cared about what he was teaching_. He
just insisted that you did, too.

~~~
steve-howard
Real analysis was the hardest class I ever took, and I didn't even really have
to. Barely scraped a C, but I wear it more proudly than most of the A's I've
ever gotten.

~~~
gatlin
We use the Moore Method at UT. We started with a series of axioms and over the
duration of the semester we built and proved _ourselves_ as a group every
theory. And only those theories successfully proven by the group were
admissible on tests. It was rad as hell.

------
swalberg
Hm, site is down, so I hope I'm not repeating what's in the article.

I've got 2 really smart boys in elementary school. My wife and I are amazed at
how bad the math education is. Our observations, based on a few kid-years of
school across both a public and a private school:

\- In an attempt to make math easier to learn, they're teaching math really
abstractly. "skip counting" and a bunch of other stuff. It's basically all the
tricks you figure out after you understand what you're doing, but they're
teaching the tricks and not the math itself. \- Further to the last one, they
don't teach things like times tables. Rather than just getting kids to
memorize the times tables, they make them go through all these hoops to get
them further along. I realize that times tables are no fun, but neither is
struggling through every problem. \- Most teachers are not good at math. One
teacher would send problems that didn't make any sense. I sat through a
presentation by the teachers on the "new math" and it was clear they really
don't know what they're doing, they're just teaching an algorithm. \- Most
teachers don't like math. How do you instill a sense of love for something
that you hate?

Many of these things go for other subjects too. It's just that it's more
obvious in math.

~~~
hdctambien
A friend of mine is a 4th grade teacher. That means she teaches all subjects
to her students, including Math.

She was an English major in college. She didn't take a math class her senior
year of college. She took a CS Elective to fulfil her math requirement in
college (that's where we met. The class met once a week and a different Grad
student or Professor would give a talk about whatever project they were
working on. Over the course of the semester we would have to write a page
"report" about 3 of the talks we heard)

So, she graduated, then got a Masters in Education and then started teaching
(among other subjects) Math to 9 year olds but she hadn't taken a math class
in 6 years.

She not only didn't like math, but she actively avoided it for over half a
decade and then she was tasked with teaching the basics to kids...

Part of the problem could be that there are lots of teachers like her, that
don't even know how to do the math themselves.

~~~
kd1220
This is probably tied to female "mathphobia" in some way, because in my
experience males were the most competent math teachers. Gender biases
notwithstanding, I can say there were three female teachers in my school
career who influenced my math aptitude a great deal: my 1st/4th grade teacher
(same woman), my sixth grade English/Computer teacher, my 10th grade Algebra 2
teacher.

What they all had in common was the ability to see my aptitude and find
materials for me that I could benefit from. These teachers may not have been
math whizzes, but they definitely weren't afraid to give their students
material they weren't completely comfortable with themselves. They also
encouraged me to do more difficult math and were very supportive in general.
Their attitude carried me very far, even if they couldn't answer some of the
more difficult questions I would ask. My calculus teacher was very good, but
he was a gigantic asshole.

~~~
ericabiz
And in my experience, the best math teacher I ever had (Geometry!) was female.
Lesson: Don't gender stereotype based on personal experience. Not only is it
probably not relevant to others' experience, it's also not helpful.

~~~
kd1221
Two data points, yours and mine, are hardly enough to draw a lesson from.
Lesson: Don't jump to conclusions and teach others lessons based on your hurt
feelings.

The majority of the comment was praising my female math teachers for caring
enough to go outside their comfort zone to foster a love of mathematics. If
more teachers in general had the temerity to venture into the unknown when
educating their students, especially in math and science, we might not have
serious gender gaps in most professional fields.

------
kevinalexbrown
I had a friend in college who never thought he was good at math. Then one day
in 10th grade he started going through math books. He is now an _extremely_
talented mathematician at Harvard. Insert lockhart's lament, I suppose.

Part of the problem I think is that we assume that people who don't get math
early on are just "bad at it" as opposed to people who don't get reading. If a
student doesn't learn to read, we think "how can we better teach them? Do they
have dyslexia? What are ways we can teach dyslexic children to read? We don't
ask the same questions when a student doesn't get math, we just say "oh, well,
they suck at that then."

~~~
lightcatcher
I find it amazing how narrow the gap is between brilliant and average,
particularly for intelligent people. A couple of hours of reading a textbook
can sometimes be equivalent with about a year of public school education.

Case in point: Took AP Computer Science my sophomore year of high school. I
got C's on most of the tests (mostly code tracing) for the first two months or
so. After getting a particularly bad grade on a test (near failing, and I got
all A's in everything else), I went home and thought "fuck this" and pulled
out some Java book and read it for about 5 hours. After this, I moved from
being about 40th percentile to best student in my class. I got high A's the
rest of the year without trying particularly hard, and I actually enjoyed the
class, and this lead to me starting to program on my own for fun, and
eventually becoming a pretty good programmer.

------
cheald
I think a lot of it is the educational system. Educators treat math with
voodoo gloves because they don't like it, and kids learn that attitude from
them, leaving everyone involved with a "don't make me get too close" attitude
towards math.

I was exceptionally fortunate to have a math teacher in high school who is
probably one of the best high school teachers in my state. She _loved_ math.
She was excited as _hell_ to get to teach it every day. I had her for 7 of my
8 HS semisters, and I credit much of my appreciation for math to her. I was
still never a good math student - B+ at best due to lack of discipline in
cross-checking answers and the like - but I loved (and still love) math.
Calculus was such a blast for me that I took it twice in HS (the second time
around for college credit).

I think the other half of the equation is that math is _hard_. It requires a
level of mental discipline and precision that most people don't possess, and
have no interest in possessing. I think that for most of us here, who have at
least some interest in programming, this isn't obvious. We think in discrete
terms and proof-like concepts, but most people don't. Math takes more
brainpower and more self-discipline than most any other primary education
subject, and people naturally follow the course of least resistance.

------
lancefisher
I'm having fun teaching my 4-year-old math. After counting, addition was easy
by holding up fingers or drawing dots. Then, subtraction came by counting
backwards or crossing out dots.

A couple of weeks ago we started multiplying. To do 5 * 3, we make 5 circles,
draw three X's in each circle, and then count them up.

Last week, we started dividing. To do 16 / 3, he'll draw 16 X's, then circle
3, then 3 more, etc. At the end there is one left over (poor little guy).
Then, he counts up the circles and writes: 5 R 1.

We go up and down the stairs for positive and negative numbers. He really
enjoys all this. Kids enjoy almost anything you do together. He'll even sit
down and write his own problems, and problems for me to do.

I'm not expecting too much from the schools on math when he starts in a couple
years, so I'm hoping to cultivate that interest at home, and maybe he can
share it with his classmates.

~~~
jerfelix
Make sure you teach the "tricks". Those are amusing. I'm sure you can find a
bunch online.

For example, a trick to multiplying by 9: hold up all 10 fingers, and then put
down the one that matches what you are multiplying. The answer is the number
of fingers still up (appending the count of those to the left of the down
finger to the count of those to the right).

Example in ASCII Art: 9 x 4:

    
    
        ! ! ! . !      ! ! ! ! !
        left hand      right hand
    

4th finger is down. 3 up on the left side, 6 up on the right. 9 x 4 = 36.

Edit: Here's a link: <http://listverse.com/2007/09/17/10-easy-arithmetic-
tricks/>

~~~
lancefisher
I like the X9 trick. I'm surprised how many of my adult friends have never
seen it.

The "tricks" he likes right now are the ones he can understand like n * 1 = n
for any value of n or n / 1 = n (because you have one circle around
everything).

I've tried showing him some tricks, but they aren't surprising and cool to him
yet.

------
kirse
Gifted kids aren't really any different from the "regular" kids, they just
often have a smarter-sounding rationalization for why they don't enjoy math.
However, it's really the age-old excuse "When am I even gonna use this?"

I really came to enjoy math / calculus when I was taking a physics class and
started to understand the world better through the lens of my new math
knowledge. Einstein's theories made so much more sense when you could think
about the physical limits imposed by the math. Otherwise I couldn't care less
about the Disc method and rotely calculating the volume of objects around an
axis...

So to many children, learning math without practical application is like
teaching someone a successively harder alphabet/vocab every year without ever
writing an essay or delivering a speech... Or like learning how to read music
and play harder scales without ever performing a piece.

Effective learning needs a good balance between application (the fun) and
mastery of technique (the sweat and tears).

~~~
lightcatcher
This might be true, but I've found quite the opposite at college. A good
amount of people major in math because they enjoy abstraction and want to get
as far as possible from implementation details/application.

------
brudgers
The title of the article assumes that gifted kids are supposed to like math.
That's plain stupid.

Although a "gifted" child is perhaps more likely to enjoy math than children
less likely to receive encouragement and praise for their work in math; there
is nothing wrong when a bright child's interest is in history, art, writing or
even sports.

To put it another way - as the WPT shows, smart kids often prefer Texas
Hold'em to Chess. The idea that intelligent people should desire abstractions
rather than concrete engagement with the world is as old as Plato's
redirection of Socrates' project from the actual corruption of youth to tomes
of political theory.

Likewise, the article is based on a theory that smart kids like math rather
than acknowledging that the data show that many of them don't.

~~~
blahedo
> _The title of the article assumes that gifted kids are supposed to like
> math._

That's not really true; it just assumes that _some_ gifted kids would, a
priori, be expected to like math.

------
phamilton
I've always felt it was for different reasons.

If Math is a language, then the first 10 years of instruction are essentially
spelling tests. There is very little flexibility nor room for creative thought
in those years of instruction. Most kids never get to a proof or other areas
without a defined path from start to finish. That is like only studying
English grammar and never taking a literature test. Sure it can be
interesting, but it is hardly creative.

I see mathematics, especially the more abstract areas, as much more similar to
the arts than to the sciences.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Proofs are boring. Who needs proofs? You either know what you're proving is
already proved, then what's the point? Or you know it probably is false, then
there's even less reason to.

People want math to be able to make things with it, all the math which doesn't
help making things should be confined to 0,5% of population who really want
this kind of punishment.

And responding on the title: the answers starts with "bo" and ends with
"ring".

~~~
sp332
Because proofs are interesting. They're the "under the hood" of larger chunks
of math knowledge. If you understand how to follow a proof, you'll have a much
better understanding of the strengths and limitations of various mathematical
statements. If you can work a proof youself (which is a lot harder actually),
then you can participate in the global conversation among mathematicians and
maybe even contribute.

~~~
guard-of-terra
For most people, dealing with mathematical proofs is a kind of parroting. They
learn a path and can follow it all right, but they never deviate from the said
path because there's no point. Which might be insightful but is inherently
boring, because there's no way you'll make anything that didn't exist before.
You only make some mind ways in your brain which will perhaps help you one day
dealing with some real problem with real output. Might as well flash a
firmware over your brain.

Given the current state of math, very few people would ever be able to
contribute anything. Others can skip to the plan B immediately.

~~~
shasta
For most people, dealing with any math is parroting, which is the problem.
Creating proofs of simple things is well within the grasp of bright high
school students, and is a wonderful experience -- I feel sorry for anyone who
misses out on it. Really, very little traditional mathematics is required to
enjoy proving that there is no solution to the bridges of Konigsberg problem,
no way to cover a chess board with dominoes leaving only opposite corners
exposed, or no largest prime.

------
jamesbkel
One of things that I have found to be a disappointed with the US education
system is lack of statistics courses in High School. In most cases, the extent
of stats/prob education is limited to AP Statistics, which most students will
not take and probably scares off many otherwise bright students because of the
"AP".

I find this particularly troubling since I remember as a student that my peers
would constantly complain about math courses using the rationale "Am I ever
going to really use this?". Both sides are arguable for certain subjects (I
can't remember the last time I really used trigonometry, but I do think that
learning it helped me to reason better in other domains). However, I find it
troubling that statistics is not mandatory/highly encouraged, yet it is
something that applies to an incredible amount of everyday activities.

~~~
neilc
_One of things that I have found to be a disappointed with the US education
system is lack of statistics courses in High School._

Absolutely. Teaching HS students trig but not statistics makes zero sense.

That said, the way statistics is taught is absolutely awful (probably even
worse than most math education), so I'm not sure it would make much
difference.

~~~
jamesbkel
That is a valid point.

One of things I noticed when I was in HS (~10 years ago) was that since it was
such a new phenomenon to teach stats in public HS, the teacher was essentially
learning alongside us. This was no fault of his own, but simply that when he
was training to teach, the value of teaching everyone basic stats was not
appreciated.

I can only hope that trend will change.

~~~
gujk
Considering how awful college stats classes are, I don't see high school
getting any better.

------
learc83
The problem with math is that more so than other subjects, one bad teacher, or
bad year in general, can impact you for life. I think it's more important that
we make sure a higher percentage of high school students have a basic
understanding of the fundamentals, and leave the depth for college.

From what I've seen from tutoring 3 younger siblings in math throughout their
high school days, I think they should spend the first 3 years of high school
drilling Algebra into their heads. Then in the last year they can spend half a
year on geometry and half a year on trig. Or maybe keep kids in Algebra until
they can demonstrate an absolute mastery.

The biggest problems my sibs had with higher math wasn't the higher math, it
was the algebra underlying it. They get one year of Algebra in 8th grade and
the move on to Geometry assuming they have mastered it, but they havent.

~~~
ISloop
I completely agree. In my Calculus 2 class (integrals and series), the most
difficult thing to work with is the algebra and trigonometry. The class is
conceptually easy, but our brains get annihilated when we have to grind
through a hundred steps of computation. I though my algebra/trig was fine when
I went through it in high school, but apparently it didn't prepare me at all
for college math.

------
jisaacstone
somewhat related:

When I was in high school many of my classmates told me the 'did not like word
problems.' I now realize that kids who do not like word problems are kids who
do not understand what they are being taught.

Ant that is most of the kids.

~~~
nassosdim
This is exactly what Sal, the founder of Khan Academy, believes. What
strengthens this argument is that, if you miss a few logical steps you end up
even more baffled when you encounter concepts that are build upon the concepts
on which you neglected to learn, mostly because you were either embarrassed to
ask in class or because you thought that you got it right in the first place.

This, adding the fact that it's "socially acceptable" to claim that a person
might not be smart enough and give up entirely, is what makes children fail in
the end and deemed to be "stupid".

Edit: If you're further interested in Salman Khan's point of view you can
check his TED talk here <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk>

~~~
jisaacstone
Thanks for the video - Always good to seen an interesting TED talk.

------
bane
In my own case, looking back, it's definitely because it require some
semblance of effort to "get". Pretty much every other subject was intuitively
easy and/or boring and/or could be faked at a high level.

Math often isn't intuitively easy (lots of rules to learn!), lots of boring
grindwork to get the grade, and _can't_ be faked.

Because it didn't come "automagically" like the other subject (or at least how
I knew the other subject could if I had applied myself), I figured I just
wasn't good at it. Reinforce this with lots of people who also thought they
just weren't good at it and leveraging all that into a pile of excuses, I did
famously bad in math in K-12.

In college I decided to start over and finally tackle it, I had to learn how
to accept that some subjects are hard, that grindwork has value, and how to
actually _build_ competence in something rather than just _having_ it. I
figure if I was so smart, I should be able to figure out how to figure out
math.

And it worked! I ended up picking up a math degree as a side product of
learning how to learn math while getting my C.S. degree. Got great grades up
through some reasonably upper-level math courses.

Truth is, I don't think I'll ever really take an interest in math. I haven't
really done any looking into it in a decade, and probably couldn't solve and
integral to save my life. I still can't get over the notion of not being
naturally "good" at it. But I learned tons going through the process and am
satisfied that I _could_ learn the subject now even if I've forgotten all the
details these days.

I'm pretty convinced after going through it all that most people could
eventually learn to handle most of the maths through at least single variable
calculus if they can learn how to learn it -- and I think that that process is
highly personal and highly specific to the individual, but it's at least
doable.

------
unabridged
The problem is you can not learn math from public school teachers because
almost all of them are not able to do math themselves, the very few you meet
who can are usually teaching the top level honors classes in high school, so
at best you are only getting exposed to it for your last few years. The
problem is the kind of skill required to do math usually leads you somewhere
else besides public school, and if you are going to teach its going to be
college level.

Most of the time anyone who really learns math ends up teaching it to
themselves. It can be tough to find self motivation if you are struggling at
all so the only kids who like math are usually the ones that instantly grasp
concepts, they can do the rote busy work in a few minutes and spend the rest
of class day dreaming about math ideas or reading ahead in the textbook to
sections they find interesting. This is where the love of math comes from.

------
api
Because math is by far the worst taught subject in schools, including
university level.

------
warmfuzzykitten
Is there one iota of research to support any of the proposed remedies? In
particular: kids need more word problems. Do they really? Would it make any
difference to the outcome? What is the desired outcome? One reason education
isn't better is it is by and large pre-scientific. Teaching approaches are
based on opinions, anecdotes and cherished beliefs, but precious little data.

------
tluyben2
I thought I didn't think I would like math until I made my first game (which
needed it); it sucked me in and I tried to learn as much as I could after
that. Never really stopped :) Guess kids (gifted or not?) just have to have
their buttons pushed, not just do mindnumbing excersizes in school.

Edit: this was 27 years ago BTW: you would hope (gifted) kids now come into
contact with game creation faster now.

------
lucasjung
The author provides some system solutions that I agree with, but which I doubt
would be implemented any time soon on a large scale. That leaves me asking
other questions:

What can _I_ do, as a parent, if I see that my children are not being taught
math at the proper pace? I could tutor my children at home to a certain
extent, but that just raises all sorts of other questions:

I've got a solid math background, but no education background, so what kinds
of resources are available to me to establish an effective home tutoring
program?

How can I tell if the pace I am setting is too fast, too slow, or just right?

In the unlikely event that one of my children is a "math outlier," my
knowledge of math, although in the 90th (95th? 99th?) percentile, would prove
woefully inadequate: where would I find an (affordable) math tutor with
comprehensive knowledge of math?

This last question is the only one I think I have a decent answer for: find a
mathematics graduate student looking to earn some money on the side.

~~~
asimeqi
I tutor my 4 year old daughter in math using Singapore Math texts
(<http://www.singaporemath.com/>). We are working with the kindergarten books
and I think my daughter is doing OK. I think that everybody who values math
education should do something like that with their children. The gain is just
too big to ignore. My daughter is already thinking about addition and while
she doesn't yet remember the addition facts she has no difficulty posing word
problems as addition problems.

The books are not very difficult for parents to understand and give you a
baseline that you can follow very closely. Also, I hope that since it is
unlikely that my child will do the same book in school I do not run the risk
that the she will refuse to do math in school since she has already done the
book.

Since you have the book you can set the pace based on how difficult the lesson
of the day seems for the child. You can do one page per week or 10 pages per
day (both these things have happened to me). Of course there can be several
levels of understandings of the same lesson and in my case I usually am happy
with the lowest level. To correct for that I do sequentially 2 different books
that have the same material (Singapore Math provides multiple books for the
same level). I skipped some chapters about weights and volumes since these
seemed too involved for my daughter (3 at the time), but I have done
everything else that is on these books.

I must say that until now this has been a wonderful experience for me. I have
never needed to ask my daughter to do math, anytime she sees me free she asks
for it herself. And almost always I am the one who tries to cut the lesson
short, making sure that next day she will want to come back wanting more.

------
rachelbythebay
How many of those kids are being shunted into something like Duke's TIPS
program in 7th grade to then face a full-on SAT? That happened to me and once
I saw the math involved, I just closed the booklet and put my head down. That
told me pretty early on that math was not my thing.

~~~
cowpewter
Oh man, 7th grade was the year that math finally became fun to me. Up until
that point, math had always been my least favorite subject, because it was all
plain arithmetic. Then 7th grade we hit pre-algebra and suddenly math was fun.
I wound up doing mathlete-type competitions, and I actually did pretty well in
the Duke TIPS SAT. I remember there being a lot of stuff in the math section
that I'd never seen before, but I knew it was supposed to be for high
schoolers and didn't expect myself to recognize it, and it was multiple choice
so I just tried to figure everything out the best I could. I forget what my
verbal/math breakdown was but my total was a 1370 (back when the SAT was out
of 1600).

History became my least favorite subject after that, because suddenly math was
about solving problems, not being a human calculator, and history was still
just memorizing names and dates and facts and regurgitating them back out on
demand, which I am terrible at.

------
leot
The process of learning a math concept is often a step-like function. Unlike
in other subjects, it can be hard to learn math concepts in small useful
steps, and when it comes time to solve a problem, it's hard to fool oneself
into believing that one understands a concept when one doesn't.

People often hate ego-damaging objective evaluations of their performance, and
math is full of them. Learning math is, almost by necessity, a humbling
experience (it's always possible to come up with more difficult math
questions).

So a first step to the successful teaching of math is to teach patience,
persistence, humility, a sense of what it "feels like" to learn a difficult
concept, and a certain comfort with not-yet-understanding.

~~~
unabridged
Exactly, this is why math draws in people who thrive in the face of
intellectual challenge. People who's first reaction to a difficult problem is
to spend hours dissecting it to understand how it works and find a solution
are the ones that tend to like math. People who react by getting frustrated,
dread going to math class and spend their lives trying to avoid it.

------
rdtsc
A got a serious kick out of solving math equations and word problems. When I
got the result was very satisfying. It was like a game. Maybe it was part of
growing up poor and not having enough for fancy toys (paper and pencils were
nice and cheap). I also liked to take apart and build things. Eventually by 13
I knew I was going to like programming. Computers were fascinating and we
saved for year and I got an 8bit ZX Spectrum knock-off. It was the best thing
in the wold. So for me it is very strange that kids wouldn't like math. I
guess I was a weirdo growing up...

------
mooki
What really got me was the lack of context. Here's some math - learn this
stuff. Had the teacher just taken a few minutes to explain "look these
equations are used in machine learning and powers google", that might've
ticked your interest. Instead you developed this suspicious mindset where you
couldn't really tell if they were wasting your time or not (which they often
were).

It gets even worse because you spent six years in grade school grinding long
division (oh god) then finding out it's almost useless. The introduction of
more interesting math times out well with the rebellious phase where you stop
trusting adults.

Only reason I ever got into math was programming. I'm just so happy none of
the highschool computer teachers knew how to program and had us memorizing MS
Word instead, because I'm sure they would've ruined that to.

As a tangent I was talking to a friend who studies astronomy. She does math
for fun, but haaates programming and sees it as dull busywork. Her first
introduction to it was through school and it's all "punch in these numbers and
see what it does".

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jriley
Gifted kids need to see gifted adults using "story problems" in real life.

If kids see how math is needed to trade in Chicago, to gamble in Vegas, to
optimize at Google or to solve the German tank problem kids will want to know
more.

I remember every guest speaker in K-12 math classes -- only about one per
year. And I'm probably exposed to more math from HN links than I was as a non-
technical undergrad.

~~~
marquis
Absolutely! Like I'd posit that many of us learnt Chess from an adult. Not
many kids pick this up themselves, without an initial introduction.

I think another issue is that we expect parents to be able to introduce kids
to advanced topics. What happens when you get a brilliant kid with no access
to education outside of the classroom? More often than not at least a few
years of missed accelerated learning.

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sanjiallblue
Back when I went to public school I tested in the gifted categories for both
reading and math. However, once I got to algebra my education fell apart.
"Higher math" just didn't make sense to me. However, I switched to
homeschooling in Middle School and ended up going to a homeschool co-op where
a Japanese teacher was teaching both a Japanese language class and the math
classes.

In three months I learned more about the logic behind mathematics, and by
extension more about math period, than I learned in the previous 14 years in
public school. I took one math class from here years and years ago and I can
still do calculus. The Japanese method for teaching math is just simply
amazing (it helped that she was ranked number one in the nation (Japan, not
the US) when she was in high school, this woman was seriously brilliant, she
just got knocked up by an American and ended up having to quit Todai).

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InclinedPlane
Increasingly, K-12 mathematics is taught as a matter of brute-force rote
memorization. Even the higher level math up through algebra and geometry is
taught through memorization of formulas and "plug and chug" techniques
combined with excessive levels of busy work (massive homework loads, etc.)

It's no wonder most kids get turned off by that.

~~~
gujk
Increasingly? The whole Discovery Program of the late 1990s and 2000s is
everything but plug and chug and memorization, to the point that parents
started a reactionary "Where's the Math?" movement (actual name) to put some
plug and chug back into the curriculum so their kids can't bluff their way
through math class.

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edtechdev
I was the top math student in my school every year of my life, and I always
hated math, and I even still shy away from it when I can.

I do educational research now (engineering/science/history education - but
yeah I still shy away from research on math education).

The reason I believe is because kids aren't taught why math is relevant or
useful to them.

For example I still remember in first grade, we got handed a big book of math
problems and had to go through them all over the course of the year. It was so
boring, I raced to finish it as soon as I could. I remember racing with other
students in fourth grade, too, to see who could finish tests the fastest. That
probably did have a role in my math abilities improving. There have been
studies of having kids 'race' through math problems really fast so that they
learn to do it more automatically, and this is apparently common practice in
China if I recall.

This may help learning math, but it doesn't help and possibly hurts interest &
motivation to learn math. And studies have shown that interest and motivation
are what correlate the most with our career choices, not test scores or
abilities.

Finally, yes, there are solutions already out there that teach math in a way
that makes it relevant and more interesting to students - they just haven't
spread all over yet. The Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) project out of
the Netherlands is very old, and there have been similar efforts since then.
They are basically theoretically grounded in what is known as situated
cognition. All cognition/learning is tied to the context. Jean Lave for
example showed how some Brazilian street children had developed very
sophisticated math skills on the streets. Some less depressing contexts for
learning math skills might be in the grocery store, or in creating a game or
other software app (which is how I came to finally see the uses of
differential equations and matrices and trigonometry and the like after
college - creating educational software applications).

John Dewey knew about this 100 years ago. He said we shouldn't educate
students for the future (which is uncertain and unimportant to kids), but
instead educate them for today. How is what you are teaching them useful to
them right now, in their own lives, not the lives of adults or professionals.

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

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Hominem
I was just thinking about this. In a nutshell, I was a pretty smart kid, when
I first started being taught math nobody believed I didn't "just know" things
like multiplication tables. When I got things wrong, they thought I was acting
out because I was "bored", and I was constantly punished.

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wccrawford
First off, I love math. It's awesome. I've always loved it, and it was always
my best subject.

But let's be honest: It is BORING. I don't sit around doing math things in my
head when I could be doing anything else.

Okay, occasionally I'll find some interesting math thing and play with it, or
find a (real life) word problem and decide to solve it. But other than that,
it's so amazingly boring. Learning math is even more boring.

So why don't kids like math? Because it's boring! I don't blame them.

Some people are blaming the teachers, or the education system, or blah blah
blah. Okay, maybe they -could- be doing things better, but has anyone ever
done their job perfectly? I've yet to meet that person. Instead, they're doing
their best, just like everyone else.

I started learning Japanese a few years ago. What I didn't expect to learn was
how many different ways there are to learn a new language. And the best way
isn't any single one of them... It's to combine a bunch of them together. And
not a particular set, either. You should combine all the ones that work best
-for you-.

Having learned just exactly how complicated it is to make the perfect set of
lessons for a single person, I looked around and saw how differently everyone
learned. It's not only impossible to create a perfect set for 1 person, it's
impossible to create a good set that matches everyone. The best you can do is
catch the people who don't learn well on their own and hope the rest will
teach themselves.

So then I look at our system, and I'm not surprised that I see that's exactly
what they're doing. They're trying to catch the stragglers and leaving the
brightest to fend for themselves. And they can. I did. But had I -known- that
was happening, I'd have forced my education to go differently.

My girlfriend is homeschooling her son for various reasons, but chief among
them was that he hated school. He was bored and picked on, and yet still
getting bad grades. She made him a promise that if he brought his grades up to
a certain level, she'd homeschool him the next year. Unsurprisingly, he easily
hit that level.

It's been going great for them. She has accelerated everything to the point
that he is constantly learning, and he gets top marks on everything. Then,
because there's free time, he gets a little vacation to have fun for a while,
then back to work the next semester.

They also go beyond the required instruction and do projects based on the
material. I can't think of anything better to create lasting memories than
that.

tl;dr - Our system is fundamentally flawed.

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tete
I think the problem in education (and also in work) is that people feel forced
to do something. It really kills interest, regardless of what it is.

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cq
If they don't like math, what makes you think they're "Gifted"?

~~~
ceejayoz
They could play a Bach piece at 5, or they write stunning prose, or any of the
other remarkable things some kids do that apparently don't fall in your
bafflingly narrow definition of "gifted"?

~~~
cq
Implying I defined gifted, or even believe that people CAN be gifted.

