Grumble.

[nimthiriel]

Once again, I find myself being pretty damned peeved at the way maths is taught in this country.

Usually, my beef is with the way Algebra is taught. Today, it's with the fact that directed numbers (positives and negatives) are taught far too late. It's the kind of thing that kids should be proficient in by the end of primary school. If kids can handle whole modules regarding money and earning and borrowing then they can handle negative numbers. Year 8 should not be the first time that it is done formally.

Comments

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

My uncle, who is only five years older than me, made the mistake of teaching me negative numbers before I learned carry-over subtraction. So when my grade 3 teacher showed us, say, 22 - 18, and said, "now we can't do 2 minus 8, can we?" I blurted out, "Yes you can! It's negative 6!"

My teacher was NOT impressed.

[nimthiriel]

I did exactly the same thing! XD

I also had the knowledge of blood types and DNA in primary school. A woman came to talk to us about how people are all the same, and said if you have a kidney from a white person, an Asian person and a black person they'd all be the same. I blurted out "No they wouldn't!" thinking of the genetic differences causing things like skin colour and height, but she shot me down saying "NO THEY'RE NOT!", thinking I was a racist :-/

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

As a kid I could be really show-off-y about what I knew, and I was really into space, and so I had fun instructing my second-grade classmates that the SUN is a STAR, because it was information that blew my mind at that age. And all the kids are arguing with me: "Nuh-uh, it's the SUN, you're STUPID."

So what do I do but I ask my teacher to prove me right. And she said I was wrong! I was so upset about it, because I knew I was right. To this day, I wonder what the hell my teacher was thinking. I can't decide if she was really just that dumb, or if she was tired of me being a little smartass show-off and was trying to take me down a notch.

[nimthiriel]

She was probably just dumb.