The Naked Green

2004.12.14 Tuesday

Learning (Math*Reform)

Colored in: — Mr. Green @ 2.46 pm

I have spent part of the day today learning math. Contrary to what you might think, this has involved finding some elementary level math sites and learning how to divide. That’s right, I forgot how to divide! For years now I haven’t been able to do long division and yet I have survived somehow. It’s taken for granted so no one offered to teach me and I had no need to go looking…until today. I went to the community college to start the math portion of the placement test (I have to work on it during my lunch break). I figured I should at least learn how to divide again.

I have actually taken math tests without knowing this and done alright, which shows that I have learned a few mathematical concepts. Unfortunately, the concepts are so vague that I take forever dancing around the problem, filling up scratch sheets with possible solutions and allegorical problems that may relate.

Much of math has done this to me (hidden somewhere) and I blame the style in which it was taught (and a lot of a weed known as marijuana). I got so tired of hearing, “It’s like a staircase, you have to start at the bottom and hit all the steps on the way up” (whiny tone added). Why couldn’t they just show me the top of the stairs, or perhaps the next landing and as I climbed, I could see the goal better. Maybe I could even skip steps as my legs grew. Instead they kept yelling, “look at the step!” making me trip over the next one not knowing where I was going.

The problem with math is (more…)

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