Teaching Themselves Math

From GWS 52

I’ve heard and read that some schoolteachers are realizing that less is more when it comes to instruction in 21st century schools, but how do you know when you’re over-explaining, being overbearing, or not being clear when instructing someone? How do you know when to give a learner time and space to figure things out on their own? This is hard to do in schools, where keeping children up to grade level, on task, and ready to move to the next grade is the bottom line for teachers’ future prospects. But when you are helping your children learn at home on their learning schedules, not school’s, it is also hard to keep from teaching “too much,” as this letter describes.

Lillian Sly (BC), writes:

… I’ve never worried about whether my kids would read; books are too much a part of our life … The subject that has always given me qualms is math. I’d never done well in math myself and doubted that I could lead my kids through its tangles. Basic skills we’ve worked on by playing and scoring Scrabble, Gin Rummy, Blackjack, Yahtzee, and Cribbage. This has worked fairly well, but whenever I’ve tried to explain anything new to Andrew (8), he would get upset. “That makes no sense!” He’d refuse to listen to further explanations, becoming more upset, to the point of tears if I persisted. I didn’t know if he was incompetent, or I was. He does understand more than he did a year ago, but I don’t think I can take much credit, he definitely is not up to grade standard.

A few days ago he picked up one of our unused math texts and opened to some problems on area and volume. “How do you do this stuff?” I kept my mouth shut expecting his usual angry and disgusted reaction. Imagine my pleased surprise when he turned to the first page and started working. He was up past eleven that night and finished the work on area and volume—29 pages! I had read of such things in John Holt’s books, but never thought one of my children would show such initiative. I was astounded and very proud of Andrew.

This morning I suggested doing a bit more. He got the text and sat at the table with me. He hadn’t done one page before the anger showed up. “There’s no sense in this!” I tried to explain. “I can’t understand it!” The book got put away.

He’d done find when the only prompting was his own curiosity and desire to learn. As soon as I stepped in to direct and help him he resented my interfernece and it became impossible to do any math. (Andrew has continued to work on his own and is up to page 73.)

Matthew (6) has a good head for numbers and understands more than I give him credit for. The last time we played Yahtzee he added the column of two-digit numbers one at a time: “22+25=47, 47+15=62, 62+31=93, etc.” It took a while, but he did it. He ended with two three-digit numbers to add, 108+156. He sstarted to write a 2 in the hundred column. I jumped in, “No. Add the ones first and carry, like this …” “I don’t understand. Isn’t the answer 264?” I apologized for butting in and kicked myself. When he had competently added the two-digit numbers this way, why had I thought the three-digits would be too much for him? …