Day 912 of 1000
I am writing this post for fellow Math aficionado, Math educator, and Sonlight blogger, Luke Holzmann. I am not sure if he has seen it yet, but Kelly found a great article on math and math learning titled How I Faced My Fears and Learned to be Good at Math by a guy named Matt Waite. It makes many of us sad when we hear people say they hate math. The article is by and about one of those guys. The difference is that he had an epiphany as a professor of Journalism in his mid-thirties and started over with Intermediate Algebra. He is now in the middle of his first Calculus class. Here is his epiphany:
The only advantage I have over my classmates? I know exactly how to fail at math: Don’t put any effort in. Blow it off. Do something else. A glass of wine and a rerun of Big Bang Theory kicks the crap out of applications of extrema using derivatives, even if you hate wine and loathe Big Bang Theory.
But that’s the lesson I’ve learned: The difference between good at math and bad at math is hard work. It’s trying. It’s trying hard. It’s trying harder than you’ve ever tried before. That’s it.
It is all true. There is a price to pay if you want to learn math, but it is worth it. You can feel the joy of his accomplishment in the article. If you are a math hater please read the article.
Other posts about our math experience:
- Why we switched from Singapore Math to Teaching Textbooks
- Precalculus: Teaching Textbooks or Thinkwell?
- Our Homeschool Story: What Kind of Homeschool Did We Want to Be? (5.5) Math
- Math Help: What to do when Thinkwell and Teaching Textbooks explanations are not enough
Betty Blonde #75 – 10/29/2008
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