Skip to main content

"I'm just bad at math..." it's a myth!

When I first started teaching, I began to encounter the "I'm just bad at math..." comment from a variety of students. I didn't find it helpful to the situation, but what was I to do?  I wasn't in their head... maybe they really did have math deficit disorder, but it sure seemed like the large part of my students who would use this phrase, seemed to connect it with their inability to get their homework completed.

The longer I taught, the more I began to see a connection.  I even noticed that those students who were typically labeled the "math people" were also very diligent in their work.

Now, I know that we live in a society that isn't allowed to make a judgment call on anybody for any reason, so even talking this way tends to ruffle some feathers.  My response is that you should stop judging me by calling me judgmental!  But that is a different blog post, I just want to share an article about this myth of "bad at math" that is plaguing our nation.

The article is titled, The Myth of 'I'm Bad At Math' and it's subtitle is: Basic ability in the subject isn't the product of good genes, but hard work.

There is much in the article that I found to be worth reading, but I want to at least quote the final paragraph, because I believe that it holds a key thought that is impacting all of us.
Math education, we believe, is just the most glaring area of a slow and worrying shift. We see our country moving away from a culture of hard work toward a culture of belief in genetic determinism. In the debate between “nature vs. nurture,” a critical third element—personal perseverance and effort—seems to have been sidelined. We want to bring it back, and we think that math is the best place to start.
Let's not forget the key third element to our intellects.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Seed and The Soil of Education (New Learning Project Part 1)

(This is my entry for the first part of my project for my New Learning course that I am taking.) Introduction Corn Fields in Illinois I have lived the majority of my life in the Midwest: mid-state Illinois to be specific. Where I live, farming is everywhere. My grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides of my family were farmers. My dad grew up on a farm and owned farmland, well into my own adulthood. But, even if it wasn’t in the family, I still would have been surrounded by farming. You can’t go more than a mile outside of my city’s limits without encountering miles and miles of fields. Most of our highways, and even interstates, are located between acres of farmland.

This too shall pass...

Gam zeh ya'avor (Hebrew) "This Too Shall Pass" Welcome!  According to Google Analytics, this is by far the most visited post that I have ever written.  If someone comes here from a search engine, most of the time they are looking for " this too shall pass quote " or simply " this too shall pass " on Google or one of the other search engines. I am sure that most of the time visitors are looking for the originations of this quote, but I have to wonder, why is this quote on people's minds? Why are they pondering the passing of events?   Here is my thought: It is probably because most of us have realized that the adult life is much harder than we ever imagined it to be. There is more pain and more sorrow than we had ever imagined as children, but we have learned that time keeps ticking. And as time continues to flow things pass. In fact, even the really big things and the really hard things will still pass. If you are here because you are thinking ...

The Minnesota Crime Commission wrote:

Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He's dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.