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Math and Science
Jan. 21st, 2010 06:13 pmBrief exchange with my cousin on Facebook (the one with a grade-school-aged daughter) made me think about my mother trying to help my siblings and I with our homework. Mom only had a year of junior college, but did accounting for the IRS, so she was no slouch at math, but she claimed she was bad at it, and couldn't remember anything past algebra, anyway*.
I remember a quote about how people are much more willing to admit they are 'bad at math' than that they are 'bad at' other things, or that more mathy and subjects are considered harder. Or that it scares them. (Stephen Hawking once wrote in a Brief History of Time's introduction that his publisher told him that for every equation he included, he'd lose half his sales. He sarcastically commented then that he had only put in E=mc2 and he thought he could live with the loss**.
Anyway, a thought came to me then. Something like this might exist, but it would be great if someone could write a parenting book about what essentially amounts to grade school math, especially since most parents haven't seen it since they got out of school AND math teaching normally changes in 20-30 years since they took grade school math. Basically with the goal of getting the parents comfortable with what their kids learn in school, so they can do things like answer questions (or at least not feel dumb when looking at what their kids do). And the nice thing about math is that it changes slowly -- there's curriculum changes, but math itself doesn't get out of date (unlike science, which does change as our understanding of the universe changes).
I mean, I wonder how much of kids' attitudes towards math and science are picked up from their parents' feeling uncertain about it. So a book aimed towards parents of kids (or other adults) that isn't about teaching kids but about being comfortable with math and science, would be interesting.
I don't think I'd be the right person to write it, though.
--
* This could well be true. If you don't use it, you lose it. Which can mean that some people are fine at math, they just don't remember past the 'figuring out tips', 'scaling up recipes' and 'figuring out how much paint you need to cover the living room', because they never use it. Heck, a friend of mine with a Ph.D. in astronomy was bemoaning his inability to remember calculus as well as he should, since he had done mostly observations for the last handful of years.
** Tangent: Sometimes I think my Astro 101 students prefer equations. Equations mean they can just search the problems I or the professors give them for the numbers, find the one that matches, and put in the the equation. Plug and chug. Asking them questions like 'Okay, if we double this number, then what happens to that number?' is a lot harder for them.
I remember a quote about how people are much more willing to admit they are 'bad at math' than that they are 'bad at' other things, or that more mathy and subjects are considered harder. Or that it scares them. (Stephen Hawking once wrote in a Brief History of Time's introduction that his publisher told him that for every equation he included, he'd lose half his sales. He sarcastically commented then that he had only put in E=mc2 and he thought he could live with the loss**.
Anyway, a thought came to me then. Something like this might exist, but it would be great if someone could write a parenting book about what essentially amounts to grade school math, especially since most parents haven't seen it since they got out of school AND math teaching normally changes in 20-30 years since they took grade school math. Basically with the goal of getting the parents comfortable with what their kids learn in school, so they can do things like answer questions (or at least not feel dumb when looking at what their kids do). And the nice thing about math is that it changes slowly -- there's curriculum changes, but math itself doesn't get out of date (unlike science, which does change as our understanding of the universe changes).
I mean, I wonder how much of kids' attitudes towards math and science are picked up from their parents' feeling uncertain about it. So a book aimed towards parents of kids (or other adults) that isn't about teaching kids but about being comfortable with math and science, would be interesting.
I don't think I'd be the right person to write it, though.
--
* This could well be true. If you don't use it, you lose it. Which can mean that some people are fine at math, they just don't remember past the 'figuring out tips', 'scaling up recipes' and 'figuring out how much paint you need to cover the living room', because they never use it. Heck, a friend of mine with a Ph.D. in astronomy was bemoaning his inability to remember calculus as well as he should, since he had done mostly observations for the last handful of years.
** Tangent: Sometimes I think my Astro 101 students prefer equations. Equations mean they can just search the problems I or the professors give them for the numbers, find the one that matches, and put in the the equation. Plug and chug. Asking them questions like 'Okay, if we double this number, then what happens to that number?' is a lot harder for them.
