1) An awful lot of people are intimidated by math.
2) Many people are rather bad at math. I don't mean in the haven't-done-trig-in-twenty-years-and-would-have-to-do-it-over sense, but in the never-really-understood-fractions sense.
3) Groups 1 and 2 overlap quite a bit.
4) A fair number of elementary school teachers fall into group 1 and/or 2. If you don't believe that, please read Liping Ma's book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics (some libraries will have it as an e-book).
It wouldn't be surprising, then, that having parents and/or teachers who fear, loathe, or lack skill in math would lead to kids' lack of confidence and competence.
What to do?
I propose a math refresher course to reinforce not just procedural, but conceptual math for adults. The main ideas:
- Math is not here to confuse you, but to help you make sense of things.
- All of the operations are variations on counting. Addition is counting more; subtraction is counting backward; multiplication is counting groups; division is counting how many could go into groups; exponents are just faster multiplication, and roots are the reverse of exponents.
- Understanding place value matters.
- When you have a good sense of a number, you know how to compose it and decompose it for your convenience (e.g., sometimes when dealing with 17, we will think of it as 10+7 or 15+2 or 20-3 for easier computation).
- Likewise, shapes can often be broken down into simpler shapes for ease of understanding.
- Units matter.
- You should not ever make math cute if the cost is inaccuracy or distraction. Do not let Pinterest lead you astray here. Present concepts and examples in a way that makes sense.
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