The Way We Teach Math Is All Wrong

January 23, 2023 / Laura Grace Weldon / 7 Comments

“What children need is not new and better curricula but access to more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to go), and to find out what they want to find out.” –John Holt

Miss Gribbon set up a new teaching prop at the front of our first grade classroom — three stick figures made of metal with round blank faces and oversized magnetic hands. Each figure was about the size of a toddler, although she referred to them as “men.” She said the first figure’s name was Ones. The next, to our right, she named Tens. The last in the row she named Hundreds. She added two bright red magnetic fingers to each figures’ hands. Then she announced that One’s fingers were worth two, Ten’s were worth 20, and Hundred’s were worth 200.

I could NOT understand how identical magnetic people could have fingers worth different amounts. The hundreds man wasn’t taller than the tens man or the ones man. Their fingers were the same size. So I watched carefully as she stood them up the next day, hoping to figure out what distinguished them. Nothing. The Ones man from yesterday might be today’s Hundreds man. Their value wasn’t intrinsic to who they were. I struggled mightily to understand how one man could be worth more than another. (Story of my political confusion, even now.)

Each time Miss Gribbon rearranged the characters’ fingers she asked a different student, “What number do you see?” If they got it wrong, she asked again in a louder voice before reluctantly providing the answer. To me, math lessons seemed very similar to playing an unfamiliar game with kids who owned the game. They’d always say, “You’ll figure out the rules as we play.” By the time I did, they always won.

We start out in life equipped to pick up mathematical concepts easily. Well-designed studies reveal even babies demonstrate strong understanding of certain mathematical principles.

We continue to advance in our comprehension almost entirely through hands-on experience. Math is implicit in play, music, art, dancing, make-believe, building and taking apart, cooking, and other everyday activities. Only after a child has a strong storehouse of direct experience, which includes the ability to visualize, can he or she readily grasp more abstract mathematical concepts. As Einstein said, “If I can’t picture it, I can’t understand it.”

Yet right around the time formal instruction starts, children increasingly report that they worry about and fear math. Math anxiety, even in first and second graders, disproportionally affects children who have the most working memory. These are the very children most likely to show the highest achievement in math. But stress can disrupt working memory and undermine performance. Otherwise successful children with high degrees of math anxiety fall about half a school year behind less anxious students. In a study of 154 young students, about half had medium to high math anxiety.

Early math anxiety can intensify, leading to increased math avoidance and lowered competence. Over 60 years of research show that positive attitudes toward math tend to deteriorate as students move through school. More than half the adult population in the U.S. is said to suffer from math anxiety, some with math avoidance so extreme that it has the potential to damage financial decisions and careers.

Is math instruction to blame?

Innovative math educator Maria Droujkova says, in an Atlantic article titled “5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus,” that math instruction typically follows a hierarchical progression starting with counting, then addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division, onward to fractions, algebra, and so on. Unfortunately, she says, this approach has “… nothing to do with how people think, how children grow and learn, or how mathematics is built.” She and other math educators around the world say the standard curriculum that begins with arithmetic is actually more difficult for children than play-based activities related to more advanced fields of mathematics. As Dr.Droujkova writes, “Calculations kids are forced to do are often so developmentally inappropriate, the experience amounts to torture.”

That torture is compounded by the way math is taught. Extensive research demonstrates that kids readily understand math when they develop the ability to use numbers flexibly, what’s called a “number sense.” Number sense is fundamental to all higher-level mathematics. This does not develop through memorization but instead from relaxed, enjoyable exploratory work with math concepts. In fact, math experts repeatedly point out that math education standbys — flash cards, repetitive worksheets, and timed tests — are not only unhelpful but actually damaging. These common methods discourage number sense, setting young people off in the wrong direction. In fact doing math under pressure impairs the working memory students need to access what they already know. Pressure also leads to math anxiety. There’s no educational reason to use these tactics in the classroom or at home. Greater math ability has nothing to do with working quickly nor does quick recall of math facts relate to fluency with numbers.

Add to this the burden of grades and test scores. Students today deal with a heavy load of standardized tests across all major subjects, plus tests in math class as often as every few days. They quickly learn math has to do with performance, not with usefulness and certainly not with beauty or mystery.

As mathematics educator Jo Boaler writes in Mathematical Mindsets, it’s well known that grades and test scores damage motivation and result in limiting self-labels in high, middle, and low-achieving students. Research consistently shows that alternatives to grading are far more beneficial. One study compared the way teachers responded to math homework in sixth grade. Half the students were graded, the other half were given diagnostic comments without a grade. Students who got only comments learned twice as fast as the graded group, attitudes improved, and any achievement gap between male and female students disappeared.

Dr. Boaler writes about another study in which fifth and sixth grade students were assessed three different ways. Some students received only grades, some only comments, and some both grades and comments. The students who achieved at significantly higher levels were those who were given comments only. Those who got any grade at all, with or without comments, did poorly. This was true for students across the spectrum of ability. Further research found that students only needed to believe they were being graded to lose motivation and achieve less.

Studies continue to show that students given positive feedback and no grades are more successful as they continue through school. There’s a strong relationship between teachers’ assessment practices and students’ attitude about their own potential. Unfortunately teachers give less constructive feedback as students get older and students’ belief in their own chance of improving also declines steadily from upper elementary grades through high school and beyond. Even at the university level, teaching and testing has a tendency to undermine sense-making. Students are likely to limit themselves to rigid sets of rules and procedures while lacking the relational understanding to correctly apply or adapt those algorithms to the problem at hand.

What happens when students aren’t assessed?

Dr. Boaler followed teenagers in England who worked on open-ended math projects for three years. These students were not graded or tested, and only given information about their own learning, even though they faced national standardized tests at the end of that period. A few weeks before the test they were given practice exams to work through. Although they were largely unfamiliar with exam questions or timed conditions, when tested these students scored at a significantly higher level than students who had gone through standard math classes with frequent tests similar to the national exam questions.

What happens when math instruction is even more limited?

Back in 1929, pioneering educator Louis P. Benezet, superintendent of the Manchester, New Hampshire schools, wrote, “The whole subject of arithmetic could be postponed until the seventh year of school, and it could be mastered in two years’ study by any normal child.” He began an experiment. In five classrooms, children were exposed only to naturally occurring math like telling time and playing games, while in other classrooms children received typical math lessons.

At the end of the first year differences were already apparent between students exposed to these two different approaches. When children were asked the same mathematical story problem, the traditionally taught students grabbed at numbers but came up with few correct results, while the experimental students reasoned out correct answers eagerly, despite having minimal exposure to formal math. Based on these successes, the experiment expanded. By 1932, half of the third- to fifth-grade classes in the city operated under the experimental program. After several years, the experiment ended due to pressure from some principals. Children in the experimental classrooms went back to learning from a math book in the second half of sixth grade. All sixth-grade children in the district were tested and in the spring of that year all the classes tested equally. When the final tests were given at the end of the school year, one of the experimental groups led the city. In other words, those children exposed to traditional math curricula for only part of the sixth-grade year had mastered the same skills as those who had spent years on drills, times tables, and exams. Even more remarkably, the students in the experimental classrooms were from the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods where poor school performance was common. The Journal of the National Education Association published the last of Mr.Benezet’s articles in 1936, calling on educators to replace formal math instruction with naturally occurring math.

What happens when there’s no math instruction by trained educators?

Homeschooling and unschooling families around the world devote much less, if any, time to formal mathematics instruction. There are significant limitations to research of homeschooled and unschooled youth for a variety of reasons, including a self-selecting population, so findings are interesting but inconclusive.

Multiple studies indicate homeschooling offers significant academic advantages, regardless of the parent’s educational attainment. Those tested in the last two years of homeschooling, what would be a schooled student’s junior and senior years, statistically score in the 86^th to 92^nd percentile. The percentage of homeschooled students who complete college far exceeds the rate of public school students.

Studies show homeschoolers taking the SAT tend to score significantly above average in all areas except math where their scores are still above average. The most recent College Board stats show mean scores for all college-bound seniors were 497 in critical reading, 487 in writing, and 513 in mathematics. For the 13,549 homeschooled seniors who took the test that year, means scores were 567 in critical reading, 535 in writing, and 521 in mathematics.

It’s hard to wade through research comparing math achievement of homeschooled versus conventionally schooled young people because much of the research includes as “homeschooled” those students who are educated using district or state sponsored programs which provide conventional-style math instruction to be done at home, which largely replicates the problems of conventional classroom instruction.

Still, several informal surveys show disproportionate number of homeschool and unschool adults working in STEM careers. And it seems that a significant number of today’s high-achievers in technology, science, and math have emerged from the homeschooling community. Their numbers include:

Erik Demain — professor of theoretical computer science at MIT and named “one of the most brilliant scientists in America” by Popular Science
Ruth Elke Lawrence-Naimark — researcher in knot theory and algebraic topology,
Francis Collins — geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health, Samuel Chao Chung Ting — physicist and Nobel Prize recipient,
Phillip Streich — holder of numerous patents and co-founder of nanotechnology company making him a multimillionaire by the time he entered Harvard,
Arran Fernandez — youngest mathematician with sequences published in Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences,
Willard Boyle — physicist, co-inventor of charge-coupled device and Nobel Prize winner.

What happens when there’s no math instruction other than what young people request?

Democratic schools exist at the opposite end of the spectrum from conventional schooling. Students are not segregated by age and each student has one vote, just as staff members do, to democratically run the community. All young people are trusted to choose their own activities and no classes are mandatory, making these schools a collectively managed and open setting for self-directed learning.

Psychologist Peter Gray surveyed graduates of one such school, Sudbury Valley School (SVS) in Framingham Massachusetts. He found that young people who were not mandated to follow curricula, take tests, and receive grades “…have gone on to good colleges and good jobs…They are taking responsible positions in business, music and art, science and technology, social services, skilled crafts, and academia.” Dr. Gray notes that employers are rarely concerned about a prospective employee’s grades in algebra. Instead the traits for career success are those that graduates say were fostered by their time at SVS, such as “…a strong sense of responsibility, an ability to take initiative and solve problems, a desire and ability to learn on the job, an ability to communicate effectively, and perhaps most of all, a high interest in and commitment to the field..”

And there’s this anecdote, shared by teacher Daniel Greenberg in his book Free At Last. A group of students at the Sudbury Valley School approached him saying they wanted to learn arithmetic. He tried to dissuade them, explaining that they’d need to meet regularly and do homework. The students agreed to do so. In the school library, Greenberg found a math book written in 1898 that was perfect in its simplicity. Memorization, exercises, and quizzes were not ordinarily part of the school day for these students, but they arrived on time, did their homework, and took part eagerly. Greenberg reflects, “In twenty weeks, after twenty contact hours, they had covered it all. Six year’s worth. Every one of them knew the material cold.” A week later he described what he regarded as a miracle to a friend, Alan White, who worked as a math specialist in public schools. White wasn’t surprised. He said, “…everyone knows that the subject matter itself isn’t that hard. What’s hard, virtually impossible, is beating it into the heads of youngsters who hate every step. The only way we have a ghost of a chance is to hammer away at the stuff bit by bit every day for years. Even then it does not work. Most of the sixth graders are mathematical illiterates. Give me a kid who wants to learn the stuff — well, twenty hours or so makes sense.”

These examples aren’t meant to be anti-teaching, they are meant to broaden our understanding about when instruction is most useful and effective. That happens less often than we’d think — when the learner seeks guidance, demonstration, resources, or help. Learning that’s sought out sticks with the learner. It promotes curiosity, persistence, passion, and deep inquiry — exactly what’s needed to dig into the fathomless depths of mathematics or any other pursuit.

Math as it’s used by the vast majority of people around the world is actually applied math. It’s directly related to how we work and play in our everyday lives. In other words it’s useful, captivating, and often fun.

Interestingly, people who rely on mental computation every day demonstrate the sort of adroitness that doesn’t fit into conventional models of math competence. In a New York Times article titled “Why Do Americans Stink at Math,” author Elizabeth Green (who defines the term “unschooled” as people who have little formal education) writes,

Observing workers at a Baltimore dairy factory in the ’80s, the psychologist Sylvia Scribner noted that even basic tasks required an extensive amount of math. For instance, many of the workers charged with loading quarts and gallons of milk into crates had no more than a sixth-grade education. But they were able to do math, in order to assemble their loads efficiently, that was “equivalent to shifting between different base systems of numbers.” Throughout these mental calculations, errors were “virtually nonexistent.” And yet when these workers were out sick and the dairy’s better-educated office workers filled in for them, productivity declined.

The unschooled may have been more capable of complex math than people who were specifically taught it, but in the context of school, they were stymied by math they already knew. Studies of children in Brazil, who helped support their families by roaming the streets selling roasted peanuts and coconuts, showed that the children routinely solved complex problems in their heads to calculate a bill or make change. When cognitive scientists presented the children with the very same problem, however, this time with pen and paper, they stumbled. A 12-year-old boy who accurately computed the price of four coconuts at 35 cruzeiros each was later given the problem on paper. Incorrectly using the multiplication method he was taught in school, he came up with the wrong answer. Similarly, when Scribner gave her dairy workers tests using the language of math class, their scores averaged around 64 percent. The cognitive-science research suggested a startling cause of Americans’ innumeracy: school.

And Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin explains in The Math Gene that we’re schooled to express math in formal terms, but that’s not necessary for most of us — no matter what careers we choose. People who rely on mental math in their everyday lives are shown to have an accuracy rate around 98 percent, yet when they’re challenged to do the same math symbolically (as in standardized tests) their performance is closer to 37 percent.

Conventional math education may also limit our concept of what math can do. As Dr. Devlin notes in a post titled “Most Math Problems Do Not Have a Unique Right Answer:”

One of the most widely held misconceptions about mathematics is that a math problem has a unique correct answer…

Having earned my living as a mathematician for over 40 years, I can assure you that the belief is false. In addition to my university research, I have done mathematical work for the U. S. Intelligence Community, the U.S. Army, private defense contractors, and a number of for-profit companies. In not one of those projects was I paid to find ‘the right answer.’ No one thought for one moment that there could be such a thing.

So what is the origin of those false beliefs? It’s hardly a mystery. People form that misconception because of their experience at school. In school mathematics, students are only exposed to problems that

are well defined,

have a unique correct answer, and

whose answer can be obtained with a few lines of calculation.

How can we translate all these findings into math education?

We not only need to drop flashcards, timed tests, and rote worksheets. We need to emphasize math as meaningful, useful, and connected.

A. The most statistically significant predictors of long-term math achievement, according to a study that tracked children from age three to age 10, had very little to do with instruction. Instead the top factors were the mother’s own educational achievements and a high quality home learning environment. That sort of home environment included activities like being read to, going to the library, playing with numbers, painting and drawing, learning letters and numbers, singing and chanting rhymes. These positive effects were as significant for low-income children as they were for high income children. Children who attended highly effective preschools (but not moderately effective programs) also benefited. Understanding numbers as meaningful and fun is important from the earliest years.

B. Technology innovator Conrad Wolfram says we need to go beyond computation. He suggests these four steps:

Pose the right question about an issue
Change that real world scenario into a math formulation
Compute
Turn the math formulation back into a real world scenario to verify it

C. Barnard College president Sian Beilock president says math is best learned as storytelling and done so by incorporating the body, the way children naturally absorb real world math. As neuroscientists map the brain, they find humanity evolved skills that overlaid onto areas of the brain that control the body. Math doesn’t sink in when confined to the intellect. It is drawn in through the body. We see this in studies showing babies who are able to move and explore more freely learn more quickly. “Math, Dr. Beilock says, “is a very recent cultural invention.” The part of the brain used for numerical representation is related to finger motion, demonstrating exactly why children best learn by counting on their fingers. Hand movement all the way up to full body engagement, such as walking while thinking, are actually more valuable than speech in comprehending everything from early computation to abstract concepts in physics. Dr. Beilock also emphasizes the benefits of time in nature to refresh one’s attention, leading to greater focus and comprehension.

D. Dr. Droujkova adds to this by emphasizing richly social math experiences that are both complex (able to go in a variety of directions) and simple (open to immediate play). She says any branch of mathematics offers both complex and simple ways in. It is best, she explains, to keep from chaining kids into formal equations early on. There’s an informal level where kids play with ideas and notice patterns. Then comes a more formal level where kids can use abstract words, graphs, and formulas. But it’s best if a playful attitude is kept alive, because what mathematicians do at the highest level is play with abstract ideas.

Dr. Droujkova notes that the community she founded called Natural Math is essentially a “freedom movement.” She explains: “We work toward freedom at many levels — the free play of little kids, the agency of families and local groups in organizing math activities, the autonomy of artists and makers, and even liberty for us curriculum designers…. No single piece of mathematics is right for everyone. People are different, and people need to approach mathematics differently.” Although we’ve been schooled to believe that math must be taught in a structured way by professionals, Dr. Droujkova continues to establish lively and engaging community-based, open-learning math circles that can be led by any adult. She and her colleagues make their materials open under Creative Commons license and offer online hubs with courses and resources for parents, teachers and teenagers who want to lead local groups. (See naturalmath.com) As Dr. Droujkova says in a recent interview, “math circles are magic circles.”

School-like instruction has been around less than a fraction of one percent of the time we humans have been on earth. Yet humanity has thrived. That’s because we evolved as free range learners gaining mastery as we explore, play, emulate role models, challenge ourselves, make mistakes and try again. That’s how everyone learns to walk and talk. That’s how young people have become capable adults throughout history. And that’s how innovation happens in the arts, sciences, and technology. In the long view, school is the experiment.

For many it’s hard to see beyond the school mindset because most of us went to school. So when we think of education, we view school as the standard even if we simultaneously realize that many parts of that model (also found in daycare, preschool, kids’ clubs, sports, and enrichment programs) aren’t necessarily beneficial. Narrowing the innate way we learn can unintentionally narrow enthusiasm, creativity, persistence, and the desire to dive deeply into any pursuit. It can interfere with the full development of our abilities.

My first grade math lessons taught me to equate math with fear. I went on to get good grades in the subject, but by high school my math anxiety led me to give up hopes of working in a science field. Math misery doesn’t have to be imposed on the next generation.

It’s time to free ourselves from the assumption that math instruction is a painful necessity. Approaching math in ways that are disconnected from a child’s life subtracts the meaning and the joy. It multiplies fear. Data shows and experience proves that real learning flows from the learner’s consent and the learner’s interest. We can offer math as an enlivening, beautiful tool to the next generation as soon as we free ourselves from the limitations of the school mindset.

For more information:

Math Instruction versus Natural Math: Benezet’s Example
Natural Math: 100 Plus Activities & Resources

Published in Tipping Points, originally adapted from the author’s book Free Range Learning.

A Different Kind of Genius: Standardized Learning vs Beautiful Diversity

November 15, 2019July 18, 2020 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

What society seems to favor in young people — obedience, popularity, good school behavior, robust mental health, plus good grades and test scores — doesn’t necessarily build on their inborn strengths. In fact the very things we define as problems are vital aspects of human diversity. Suppressing them hinders a young person’s full development into who they are.

Here’s some of the science behind kids who go their own way.

image: youtube

Eleven-year-old Bill was defiant and got into heated shouting matches with his parents. By the time he was 12 years old, things had gotten so bad he was in counseling for his behavior. He told his counselor, “I’m at war with my parents over who is in control.”

Plenty of us broke the rules growing up and didn’t go on to earn billions as Bill Gates did, but there may be something to defiance. In 2008, researchers got in touch with nearly 750 participants from a 1968 study. In the original study these participants had been sixth graders who’d had their intelligence, attitudes, and behavior assessed. Now the participants were in their 50’s. The researchers looked for personality traits correlated with success. They controlled for IQ, household income, level of education, and other factors. They found one particular childhood characteristic predictive of those who went on to become high achievers in adulthood — rule-breaking and defiance of parental authority.

Other studies amplify these findings, showing that teens who were truant from school, who cheated, shoplifted, or displayed other anti-social behaviors (although not serious crimes) were more likely to go on to found their own companies.

We don’t know for sure why there’s such a strong correlation between youthful defiance and adult success, but it we do know traits that make strong-willed kids seem “difficult” — things like persistence, non-conformity, boldness, confidence, intense interests, and independence- — are the same traits that in adulthood characterize leaders in business, governance, athletics, and entertainment. Strong-willed kids want to find out for themselves rather than be told, and this not only helps them resist peer pressure, it can help them think beyond conventional thinking to new ways of doing things. Like Bill Gates.

image: YouTube

Stefani wasn’t popular. According to the book Doable, she was teased, called “ugly” and “weird,” and could barely face going to school. Stefani was so desperate to transform herself from a “voluptuous little Italian girl” to a “skinny little ballerina” that she became bulimic in high school, stopping only when her vocal chords started to become damaged.

Lady Gaga is now one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Unpopularity doesn’t mean we’re likely to top the charts in 20 countries, but popular kids with loads of friends aren’t actually happier than those with just a single really close friend. Kids with larger, less intimate social networks worry, even obsess about their status, influence, and power. Instead of having close relationships, they often have many people to manage. Popularity, especially in girls’ high pressure online lives, can feel more like managing one’s self-image than being truly known to one’s friends. Studies indicate kids with few, but close friends, even one best friend, grow up to have less depression, less anxiety, and higher self-worth.

How popularity may be gained is another concern. Research shows teens (especially young teens) often try to look and act more mature than they are in order to gain peer approval, what researchers call pseudomature behavior. This can include early use of drugs and alcohol, smoking, sex, and late partying. This often works short-term to boost their popularity. Long-term pseudomature behavior is linked to a greater likelihood of serious problems in adulthood including difficulties with close relationships, substance abuse issues, and criminal behavior. And overall, it turns out those who aren’t the “cool” kids in school are more likely to be personally and professionally competent as adults.

image: Erik van Leeuwen

Michelle was a handful in grade school. “I could not sit down long enough to study and to learn,” she says. She was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. Although she still struggled, she learned to work harder and work differently. Michelle Carter is now an Olympic champion holding the American record in women’s shot put.

Sally Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, says there’s a strong connection between dyslexia and success. Although fewer than 10 percent of the U.S. population is believed to have the disorder, a study found more than a third of entrepreneurs identified themselves as dyslexic. It’s thought struggling to get by in a reading world helps people develop skills like problem-solving and perseverance. It also gives them experience with failure early on, teaching them to take more calculated risks and see opportunities where others don’t.

Dyslexics may have other strengths as well. Dr. Gail Saltz, author of The Power of Different, explains in a CNN interview that there’s a good probability people with dyslexia are more likely to have an enhanced aptitude for visual-spatial relations. “It has to do with the wiring that makes it difficult for (a person) to read and do things in a very particular way. That same wiring permits a certain kind of ability in (a person’s) peripheral vision and processing and visual-spatial processing and pattern recognition.”

Many studies have found a link between dyslexia and creativity. Comparing scores on Torrance’s Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) between young students with dyslexia to those of normative TTCT samples indicated children with dyslexia were significantly better at generating many ideas and more original ideas.

Comparing scores on the WCR (widening, connecting and reorganizing) Creativity Test between middle school students with and without dyslexia showed students with dyslexia were better able to carry out unusual combinations of ideas. (What researchers strangely called “the peculiar cognitive functioning of people with learning disabilities.”)

And after years of seeing an association between dyslexia and remarkable artistic creativity, a school of art and design funded research to study the link. Admission to the school was extremely demanding, meaning student vocation choice relied on talent and not compensation for failure in conventional academics. Lead researcher Beverley Steffart found the student body intellectually at the top 10 percent of the population, yet three-quarters of students overall were found to have some form of dyslexia. In an interview with the Independent she said, “My research so far seems to show that there does seem to be a `trade- off’ between being able to see the world in this wonderfully vivid and three-dimensional way, and an inability to cope with the written word either through reading or writing.” “

Thomas G. West points out in his book In The Mind’s Eye that dyslexic people often have the gift of thinking in three dimensions, easily able to rotate an image in their minds or visualize every detail of a completed project. He write, “historically, some of the most original thinkers in fields ranging from physical science and mathematics to politics and poetry have relieved heavily on visual modes of thought. Some of these same thinkers, however, have shown evidence of a striking range of difficulties in their early schooling including problems with reading, speaking, spelling, calculation, and memory.” He notes such early learning difficulties plagued Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Auguste Rodin, Leonardo da Vinci, William James, William Butler Yeats, and many others. “Many of these individuals may have achieved success or even greatness not in spite of but because of their apparent disabilities. They may have been so much in touch with their visual-spatial, nonverbal, right-hemisphere modes of thought that they have had difficulty in doing orderly, sequential, verbal-mathematical, left-hemisphere tasks in a culture where left-hemisphere capabilities are so highly valued.”

image: Britannica.com

At 14, David was bored and reclusive. He spent most of his free time in his bedroom on the computer. His mother, a science teacher, didn’t push him to pay more attention to his classes at the Bronx High School of Science. Instead she suggested he drop out to homeschool so he could learn what he wanted to learn. After that, David didn’t pursue traditional academic subjects or go on to college. By the time he was 17 he was living alone in Tokyo, writing software, and providing tech help for a parenting blog.

He didn’t like writing as much as the blog required, so when he had a two-week gap in contracts he worked with a friend to set up a tumblelogging platform. In 2013, David Karp sold Tumblr to Yahoo for 1.1 billion. Many of us homeschool and haven’t come up with a lucrative innovation, but we do know the emphasis on high grades and test scores isn’t a formula for success.

As education reformer Alfie Kohn explains, “Research has repeatedly classified kids on the basis of whether they tend to be deep or shallow thinkers, and, for elementary, middle, and high school students, a positive correlation has been found between shallow thinking and how well kids do on standardized tests. So an individual student’s high test scores are not usually a good sign.”

Research also links higher grade point averages to less innovative or creative work overall. What’s being tested is has so little to do with the adaptable, creative, critical thinking necessary for today’s world that employers like Google, Apple, IBM, Bank of America don’t emphasize grades, test scores, even college degrees the most important criteria in the hiring process. Actually, studies show that high test scores in school don’t necessarily predict any of several hundred measures of adult maturity and competence. Increasing test scores, however, were found to be directly related to interpersonal immaturity.

We’ve known this for a long time. Back in 1985, the research seeking to link academic success with later success was examined. It was appropriated titled, “Do grades and tests predict adult accomplishment?” The conclusion? Not really. Grades and test scores only do a good job of forecasting a student’s future grades and scores. They do not necessarily correlate with later accomplishment in such areas as social leadership, the arts, or sciences. And they are not good predictors of success in career advancement, handling real life problems, or maintaining positive relationships.

That’s true in other parts of the world as well. Students in China who achieve the highest scores on college entrance exams have been found to achieve less in life after school than those who scored lower. All this test pressure, to decrease a child’s chances of success!

image: Britannica.com

Another boy named David struggled with anxiety and compulsions. His repertoire of tics included rocking, counting his steps, and hitting himself on the head. Teachers were particularly frustrated by his urge to lick light switches. David was also witty and a close observer of people. He dropped out of college, did odd jobs, and dabbled in art throughout his 20’s, finally finishing an art degree in his early 30’s. When he was invited to read one of his humorous essays on NPR, David Sedaris’ career took off. He’s now the author of nine bestselling books and his speaking tours sell out each time he travels.

In an article titled “Misdiagnosis of the Gifted,” Lynne Azpeitia and Mary Rocamora explain that gifted, talented, and creative people “… exhibit greater intensity and increased levels of emotional, imaginational, intellectual, sensual and psychomotor excitability and that this is a normal pattern of development.” These attributes, however, are often misunderstood and mislabeled by teachers, parents, and therapists as mental health disorders. They may try all sorts of interventions in hopes of normalizing what are essentially symptoms of an exceptional individual.

As Ms. Azpeitia and Ms. Rocamora go on to explain, “For the gifted, inner conflict is a developmental rather than a degenerative sign, because it drives the gifted person forward to replace current ways of thinking and being with those of higher level development. This type of positive disintegration is characterized by an intensified inner tension between what one is and what one could be. This dynamic tension is what fuels the creative person’s complex inner life and provides the impetus for growth and development.”

All sorts of studies have found links between creativity and mood disorders like anxiety, depression, and compulsions. One such study followed participants in the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop. For ten years researchers tracked 30 participants in the program along with 30 people matched in age and IQ who didn’t work in creative fields. Close to 30 percent of the control group reported some form of mental illness. In contrast, 80 percent of the writers suffered from some form of mental illness.

According to neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, author of The Creating Brain, creative people are often skeptical of authority and prefer to make up their own minds. They are more drawn to questions than answers, and may find rituals help them cope with ambiguity. Feelings of alienation, fear, and depression are common and can themselves drive even greater creativity.

We talking about a different kind of genius.

Mathematician Eric Weinstein says conventional educational gets in the way of genius. Genius is associated with high-variance, and such variance is often found in people who are diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, and other differences. Dr. Weinstein says they aren’t suited to conventional educational systems, and explains,

“If you look at the learning disabled population they very often are the most intellectual, accomplished members of society… These are the individuals who are going to cure cancer. These are the people who are going to create new multi-billion dollar industries… How much genius is squandered by muting the strengths of these populations?”

Standardized expectations don’t allow us to see that our differences are a necessary part of who we are. That isn’t to minimize the difficulties people experience as they struggle to grow up and find their way, but it can help us to accept each person as a unique constellation of traits, abilities, and inclinations. Instead of emphasizing what we perceive as a young person’s weaknesses, we can build on their strengths. Instead of forcing them to “make up” for what we think they’re missing we can let them explore what enchants them. Instead of insisting on one narrow path to adult success we can throw the definition of success open to what each person makes of it.

The Benefits of Natural Math

November 19, 2014June 1, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 14 Comments

natural math, exploratory math, hands-on learning,

images: public-domain-image.com

We now know babies as young as five months old show a strong understanding of certain mathematical principles. Their comprehension continues to advance almost entirely through hands-on experience. Math is implicit in play, music, art, dancing, make-believe, building and taking apart, cooking, and other everyday activities. Only after a child has a strong storehouse of direct experience, which includes the ability to visualize, can he or she readily grasp more abstract mathematical concepts. As Einstein said, “If I can’t picture it, I can’t understand it.”

As parents, we believe we’re providing a more direct route to success when we begin math (and other academic) instruction at a young age. Typically we do this with structured enrichment programs, educational iPad games, academic preschools, and other forms of adult-directed early education. Unfortunately we’re overlooking how children actually learn.

Real learning has to do with curiosity, exploration, and body-based activities. Recent studies with four-year-olds found, “Direct instruction really can limit young children’s learning.” Direct instruction also limits a child’s creativity, problem solving, and openness to ideas beyond the situation at hand. Studies show kids readily understand math when they develop a “number sense,” the ability to use numbers flexibly. This doesn’t come from memorization but instead from relaxed, enjoyable exploratory work with math concepts. In fact, math experts tell us methods such as flash cards, timed tests, and repetitive worksheets are not only unhelpful, but damaging. Teaching math in ways that are disconnected from a child’s life is like teaching music theory without letting them plunk piano keys, or instructing them in the principles of sketching without supplying paper or crayons. It simply makes no sense.

One study followed children from age three to age 10. The most statistically significant predictors of math achievement had very little to do with instruction. Instead the top factors were the mother’s own educational achievements and a high quality home learning environment. That sort of home environment included activities like being read to, going to the library, playing with numbers, painting and drawing, learning letters and numbers, singing and chanting rhymes. These positive effects were as significant for low-income children as they were for high income children.

There’s another key difference between kids who excel at math and kids who don’t. It’s not intelligence. Instead it’s related to what researcher Carol Dweck terms a growth-mindset. Dweck says we adopt certain self-perceptions early on. Some of us have a fixed mindset. We believe our intelligence is static. Successes confirm this belief in our inherent ability, mistakes threaten it. People with a fixed mindset may avoid challenges and reject higher goals for fear of disproving their inherent talent or intelligence. People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, understand that intelligence and ability are built through practice. People with this outlook are more likely to embrace new challenges and recognize that mistakes provide valuable learning experience. (For more on this, read about the inverse power of praise.)

Rather than narrowing math education to equations on the board (or worksheet or computer screen) we can allow mathematics to stay as alive as it is when used in play, in work, in the excitement of exploration we call curiosity. Math happens as kids move, discuss, and yes, argue among themselves as they try to find the best way to construct a fort, set up a Rube Goldberg machine, keep score in a made-up game, divvy out equal portions of pizza, choreograph a comedy skit, map out a scavenger hunt, decide whose turn it is to walk the dog, or any number of other playful possibilities. These math-y experiences provide instant feedback. For example, it’s obvious cardboard tubes intended to make a racing chute for toy cars don’t fit together unless cut at corresponding angles. Think again, try again, and voila, it works!

As kids get more and more experience solving real world challenges, they not only begin to develop greater mathematical mastery, they’re also strengthening the ability to look at things from different angles, work collaboratively, apply logic, learn from mistakes, and think creatively. Hands-on math experience and an understanding of oneself as capable of finding answers— these are the portals to enjoying and understanding computational math.

Unfortunately we don’t have a big data pool of students who learn math without conventional instruction. This fosters circular reasoning. We assume structured math instruction is essential, the earlier the better, and if young people don’t master what’s taught exactly as it’s taught we conclude they need more math instruction. (“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”)

But there are inspiring examples of students who aren’t formally instructed yet master the subject matter easily, naturally, when they’re ready.

1. The experiment done over 85 years ago by Louis Benezet showed how elementary school children can blossom when they’re free of structured math instruction.

2. Homeschooling and unschooling families around the world devote much less time to formal mathematics instruction. Studies indicate their children grow up to succeed in college, careers, and life with greater self-reliance and focus than their schooled peers. Interestingly, two different surveys of grown unschoolers showed that a much higher number of them work in STEM careers than schooled adults. The samples were small but intriguing. More proof? Many of our greatest science, technology, engineering, and mathematics contributors have already emerged from the homeschool community.

3. Democratic schools where children are free to spend their time as they choose without required classes, grades, or tests. As teacher Daniel Greenberg wrote in a chapter titled “And ‘Rithmetic” in his book Free at Last, a group of students at the Sudbury Valley School approached him saying they wanted to learn arithmetic. He tried to dissuade them, explaining that they’d need to meet twice a week for hour and a half each session, plus do homework. The students agreed. In the school library, Greenberg found a math book written in 1898 that was perfect in its simplicity. Memorization, exercises, and quizzes were not ordinarily part of the school day for these students, but they arrived on time, did their homework, and took part eagerly. Greenberg reflects, “In twenty weeks, after twenty contact hours, they had covered it all. Six year’s worth. Every one of them knew the material cold.” A week later he described what he regarded as a miracle to a friend, Alan White, who had worked as a math specialist in public schools. White wasn’t surprised. He said, “…everyone knows that the subject matter itself isn’t that hard. What’s hard, virtually impossible, is beating it into the heads of youngsters who hate every step. The only way we have a ghost of a chance is to hammer away at the stuff bit by bit every day for years. Even then it does not work. Most of the sixth graders are mathematical illiterates. Give me a kid who wants to learn the stuff—well, twenty hours or so makes sense.”

We know all too well that students can be educated for the test, yet not understand how to apply that information. They can recite multiplication tables without knowing when and how to use multiplication itself in the real world. Rote learning doesn’t build proficiency let alone nurture the sort of delight that lures students to higher, ever more abstract math.

Conventional math education may also limit our concept of what math can do. As Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin notes in a post titled “Most Math Problems Do Not Have a Unique Right Answer,”

One of the most widely held misconceptions about mathematics is that a math problem has a unique correct answer…

Having earned my living as a mathematician for over 40 years, I can assure you that the belief is false. In addition to my university research, I have done mathematical work for the U. S. Intelligence Community, the U.S. Army, private defense contractors, and a number of for-profit companies. In not one of those projects was I paid to find “the right answer.” No one thought for one moment that there could be such a thing.

So what is the origin of those false beliefs? It’s hardly a mystery. People form that misconception because of their experience at school. In school mathematics, students are only exposed to problems that (a) are well defined, (b) have a unique correct answer, and (c) whose answer can be obtained with a few lines of calculation.

Interestingly, people who rely on mental computation every day demonstrate the sort of adroitness that doesn’t fit into our models of math competence. In a New York Times article titled “Why Do Americans Stink at Math?” author Elizabeth Green (who defines the term “unschooled” as people who have little formal education) writes,

Observing workers at a Baltimore dairy factory in the ‘80s, the psychologist Sylvia Scribner noted that even basic tasks required an extensive amount of math. For instance, many of the workers charged with loading quarts and gallons of milk into crates had no more than a sixth-grade education. But they were able to do math, in order to assemble their loads efficiently, that was “equivalent to shifting between different base systems of numbers.” Throughout these mental calculations, errors were “virtually nonexistent.” And yet when these workers were out sick and the dairy’s better-educated office workers filled in for them, productivity declined.

The unschooled may have been more capable of complex math than people who were specifically taught it, but in the context of school, they were stymied by math they already knew. Studies of children in Brazil, who helped support their families by roaming the streets selling roasted peanuts and coconuts, showed that the children routinely solved complex problems in their heads to calculate a bill or make change. When cognitive scientists presented the children with the very same problem, however, this time with pen and paper, they stumbled. A 12-year-old boy who accurately computed the price of four coconuts at 35 cruzeiros each was later given the problem on paper. Incorrectly using the multiplication method he was taught in school, he came up with the wrong answer. Similarly, when Scribner gave her dairy workers tests using the language of math class, their scores averaged around 64 percent. The cognitive-science research suggested a startling cause of Americans’ innumeracy: school.

And Keith Devlin explains in The Math Gene that we’re schooled to express math in formal terms, but that’s not necessary for most of us—no matter what careers we choose. People who rely on mental math in their everyday lives are shown to have an accuracy rate around 98 percent, yet when they’re challenged to do the same math symbolically their performance is closer to 37 percent.

We have the idea that memorizing, practicing, and testing is the only way to higher achievement. It’s hard to imagine why we still believe that when studies show that high test scores in school don’t correlate with adult accomplishments (but do line up with interpersonal immaturity).

There are all sorts of ways to advance mathematical understanding. That includes, but isn’t limited to, traditional curricula. It’s time to broaden our approach. Let’s offer the next generation a more intrinsically fascinating, more applied relationship to math. Let’s foster analytical and critical thinking skills across all fields. The future is waiting.

This article is one in a series of three on natural math.

Math Instruction versus Natural Math: Benezet’s Experiment. What happened when formal math instruction was eliminated?

Natural Math: 100+ Activities and Resources. Finding and learning from math in daily life.

Portions of this article are excerpted from Free Range Learning.

Math Instruction versus Natural Math: Benezet’s Example

November 11, 2014November 19, 2014 / Laura Grace Weldon / 29 Comments

1930’s classroom (forestpark4.wikidot.com)

Children are intrinsically eager and able to learn. If we step back from our limiting preconceptions about education, we discover learning flourishes when we facilitate it rather than try to advance it through force, intimidation, and coercion.

Over 85 years ago a pioneering educator proved that delaying formal instruction, in this case of mathematics, benefits children in wonderfully unexpected ways. Louis P. Benezet, superintendent of the Manchester, New Hampshire schools, advocated the postponement of systematic instruction in math until after sixth grade. Benezet wrote,

I feel that it is all nonsense to take eight years to get children thru the ordinary arithmetic assignment of the elementary schools. What possible needs has a ten-year-old child for knowledge of long division? The whole subject of arithmetic could be postponed until the seventh year of school, and it could be mastered in two years’ study by any normal child.

While developing this rationale, Benezet spoke with eighth-grade students. He noted they had difficulties putting their ideas into English and could not explain simple mathematical reasoning. This was not only in his district; he found the same results with fourteen-year-old students in Indiana and Wisconsin. Benezet didn’t blame the children or teachers, he blamed introducing formal equations too early. So he began an experiment, abandoning traditional arithmetic instruction below the seventh grade.

In the fall of 1929 I made up my mind to try the experiment of abandoning all formal instruction in arithmetic below the seventh grade and concentrating on teaching the children to read, to reason, and to recite – my new Three R’s. And by reciting I did not mean giving back, verbatim, the words of the teacher or of the textbook. I meant speaking the English language.

To start, he picked out five classrooms, choosing those districts where most students were from immigrant homes and the parents spoke little English. Benezet knew that in other districts the parents with greater English skills and higher education would have vehemently objected, ending the experiment before it started.

In the experimental classrooms, children were exposed to what we’d call naturally occurring math. They learned how to tell time and keep track of the date on the calendar. The students played with toy money, took part in games using numbers, and when dimension terms such as “half” or “double” or “narrower” or “wider” came up incidentally, they were discussed. Instead of math, the emphasis was on language and composition. As Benezet describes these children,

They reported on books that they had read, on incidents which they had seen, on visits that they had made. They told the stories of movies that they had attended and they made up romances on the spur of the moment. It was refreshing to go into one of these rooms. A happy and joyous spirit pervaded them. The children were no longer under the restraint of learning multiplication tables or struggling with long division.

At the end of the first school year, Benezet reported that the contrast between the experimental and traditionally taught students was remarkable. When he visited classrooms to ask children about what they were reading, he described the traditionally taught students as “hesitant, embarrassed and diffident. In one fourth grade I could not find a single child who would admit that he had committed the sin of reading.” Students in the experimental classrooms were eager to talk about what they’d been reading. In those rooms, an hour’s discussion went by with still more children eager to talk.

Benezet hung a reproduction of a well-known painting in the classrooms and asked children to write down anything the art inspired. Another obvious contrast appeared. When he showed the ten best papers from each room to the city’s seventh-grade teachers, they noted that one set of papers showed much greater maturity and command of the language. They observed that the first set of papers had a total of 40 adjectives such as nice, pretty, blue, green, and cold. The second set of papers had 128 adjectives, including magnificent, awe-inspiring, unique, and majestic. When asked to guess which district the papers came from, each teacher assumed that the students who wrote the better papers were from schools where the parents spoke English in the home. In fact, it was the opposite. Those students who wrote the most masterfully were from his experimental classes.

Yet another difference was apparent. It was something that Benezet had anticipated. He explained, “For some years I had noted that the effect of the early introduction of arithmetic had been to dull and almost chloroform the child’s reasoning faculties.” At the end of that first year, he went from classroom to classroom and asked children the same mathematical story problem. The traditionally taught students grabbed at numbers but came up with few correct results, while the experimental students reasoned out correct answers eagerly, despite having minimal exposure to formal math.

Based on these successes, the experiment expanded. By 1932, half of the third- to fifth-grade classes in the city operated under the experimental program. Due to pressure from some school principals, children in the experimental classrooms were back to learning from a math book in the second half of sixth grade. All sixth-grade children were tested. By spring of that year all the classes tested equally. When the final tests were given at the end of the school year, one of the experimental groups led the city. In other words, those children exposed to traditional math curricula for only part of the sixth-grade year had mastered the same skills as those who had spent years on drills, times tables, and exams.

In 1936, the Journal of the National Education Association published the final article by Benezet. His results showed the clear benefits of replacing formal math instruction with naturally occurring math while putting a greater emphasis on reading, writing, and reasoning. The journal called on educators to consider similar changes.

As we know, schools went in the opposite direction.

Louis Paul Bénézet

This article is an excerpt from Free Range Learning. (Next post, the extraordinary benefits of emphasizing natural math over math instruction.)

Emphasis On Testing Cheats Everyone

November 2, 2011November 10, 2012 / Laura Grace Weldon / 1 Comment

SAT language scores aren’t near the levels seen in the early 1970’s. Some test-takers resort to cheating, most recently seven teens from Great Neck, NY who hired an impersonator to stand in (well, sit in) for them. The company that administers the SAT estimates cheating, mostly by collaboration, occurs in only one-tenth of 1 percent of the 2.25 million students who take the test annually. That seems insignificant, but it underscores a larger problem—our test-obsessed educational system.

E. D. Hirsch Jr., author of The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed that declining verbal scores have to do with enduring school days stripped of “substantial and coherent lessons concerning the human and natural worlds…” He goes on to note,

The most credible analyses have shown that the chief causes were not demographics or TV watching, but vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades. In the decades before the Great Verbal Decline, a content-rich elementary school experience evolved into a content-light, skills-based, test-centered approach.

I don’t agree with Hirsch’s basic stance that a core curriculum be taught in every U.S. school but he’s got a point. It’s not a new point. Learning has taken a hit heavy hit from the emphasis on standardized tests. The zombifying effect on schools, teachers and kids brought by high stakes testing isn’t pretty.

Even in the best districts, attaining those all-important numbers eliminates opportunities for innovation and time to work with students’ interests. Less stellar districts see their schools under test-heavy siege charged with getting results or getting eliminated. This drive also shapes the kind of material students see, relentlessly preparing them to reach higher for the Almighty Score while giving scant attention to more complex yet essential skills for higher learning like critical thinking, creativity, initiative, and persistence.

Why this emphasis on testing? We assume policy-makers know what they’re doing. Surely they haven’t been restructuring education based on bare numbers unless they have substantial proven results. Greater competiveness on the world market or at least greater individual success?

Nope.

Here are some eye-opening facts from my book:

National test scores

It’s widely assumed that national test score rankings are vitally important indicators of a country’s future. To improve those rankings, national core standards are imposed with more frequent assessments to determine student achievement (meaning more testing).

Do test scores actually make a difference to a nation’s future?

Results from international mathematics and science tests from a fifty-year period were compared to future economic competitiveness by those countries in a study by Christopher H. Tienken. Across all indicators he could find minimal evidence that students’ high test scores produce value for their countries. He concluded that higher student test scores were unrelated to any factors consistently predictive of a developed country’s growth and competitiveness.

In another such analysis, Keith Baker, a former researcher for the U.S. Department of Education, examined achievement studies across the world to see if they reflected the success of participating nations. Using numerous comparisons, including national wealth, degree of democracy, economic growth and even happiness, Baker found no association between test scores and the success of advanced countries. Merely average test scores were correlated with successful nations while top test scores were not. Baker explains, “In short, the higher a nation’s test score 40 years ago, the worse its economic performance . . .” He goes on to speculate whether testing [or forms of education emphasizing testing] itself may be damaging to a nation’s future.

Individual test scores

What about individual success?

Educational reformer Alfie Kohn explains, “Research has repeatedly classified kids on the basis of whether they tend to be deep or shallow thinkers, and, for elementary, middle, and high school students, a positive correlation has been found between shallow thinking and how well kids do on standardized tests. So an individual student’s high test scores are not usually a good sign.”

Why do we push standardized tests if it has been demonstrated that the results are counterproductive? Well, we’ve been told that this is the price children must pay in order to achieve success. This is profound evidence of societal shallow thinking, because the evidence doesn’t stack up.

Research shows that high test scores in school don’t correlate with later accomplishments in adulthood such as career advancement or social leadership.

We’ve known this for a long time. Back in 1985, the research seeking to link academic success with later success was examined. It was appropriated titled “Do grades and tests predict adult accomplishment?”

The conclusion?

No.

The criteria for academic success isn’t a direct line to lifetime success. Studies show that grades and test scores do not necessarily correlate to later accomplishments in such areas as social leadership, the arts, or the sciences. Grades and tests only do a good job at predicting how well youth will do in subsequent academic grades and tests. They are not good predictors of success in real-life problem solving or career advancement.

Kids certainly cheat because they haven’t prepared for the test, but they also may cheat because they simply see the whole testing game as a farce. A survey of 43,000 high school students showed that 59 percent admitted cheating on a test during the past year.

What can we do?

Some of us homeschool.

Some parents submit compelling letters telling schools they will not permit their children to be tested, part of a larger opt out movement.

Some are heartened by the ever-growing list of four year colleges that don’t require the ACT or SAT for admission.

Do you think high-stakes testing cheats our kids?