I know I'm not who you replied to, but -- I had the dubious honor of teaching some 10-12 year olds a little math last week. (They didn't understand adding/subtracting negative numbers, couldn't do any long division, functions were an unknown quantity; but that's all beside the point.) I was trying to explain how, if you have say 12 x 30 and you can't do that in your head immediately, you can mentally break it down into 10 x 30 and 2 x 30, add the components, and voila. And then you can add harder and harder numbers depending on your capacity. I'm not sure if that's a good "test"; it may even be too simple to have been in your book of tricks even though it is sort of a trick. But they couldn't do it. I was a smart kid so I tend to be a bit tough (not to their faces, of course) on children that age as far as what basics they know* -- am I unreasonable for thinking they should know how to do that, and for putting a good bit of blame on their teachers? Maybe we should push less "everyone's a winner let's do puzzles" and more "everyone can do basic mental math, so you need to learn it." *the week before, I found out that many of them couldn't distinguish between states and state capitals i.e. "what's the capital of Missouri"; "Kansas?"
Actually flagamuffin, this is exactly the thing they teach in the book! By the way, just to be clear I think that doing mental math is absolutely one of the best skills one can acquire. I was just wondering if b_b gave them a sort of aptitude test of if it was a general rule. If a student walked in and he gave them what's 111 x 23 or if it was more on a general "Oh I found this by calculating 111 x 23 in my head". Not sure if I am explaining myself clearly here. I do not think there is anything wrong with pushing kids. People might conflate "pushing" with "punishing". This is not the case. In teaching I have noticed that often times there is a heavy mental barrier for most kids. By pushing them you get them past that barrier and into where they need to be. Honestly, I just love thinking about the different ways to teach this stuff. Maybe I'll go through some of them with a self post one day, it's a bit off topic for this post.
I am not officially a teacher, I did not go to school for it. My wife is the teacher in the classroom and I help her out during the day. Because her class is split (1st and 2nd grade). We will usually cut the class into groups and I will re-enforce something that she was teaching or review concepts with the kids. However if I were to wax pedagogical (I am not sure if that's the right adjective) just for a bit, I am a teacher, the students are teachers, everyone is a teacher! My primary philosophy is that everyone knows something that is worth learning.
My primary philosophy is that everyone knows something that is worth learning.
I agree with your philosophy. I was just saying the other night at a party, after asking a lot of questions of someone, that I'd almost always rather be the one learning in the conversation. I ask a lot of questions and it's made all the difference. Of course, I'm happy to "teach" when the opportunity arises but for the most part people are so interesting, it's a shame to not learn more about/from them.
Asking questions and teaching interactively is a actually a great way to learn something interactively too. If you are with someone else, and you teach them something, often times you'll find that they will give you a perspective on the subject you hadn't thought of before. So you've gained in at least 2 ways by asking questions, first you have helped yourself by learning more and second you have helped the "teacher" gain a new perspective on the problem.