I came across an article entitled, “Memorizing Math is Wrong
– This Study Shows Why,” which lead me to another article by USNews & World
Report called, “Should We Stop Making Kids Memorize Times Tables?” Both articles are interesting. Upon reading both, I was instantly
transported to my mom’s car in third grade when I was forced to continue to try
and memorize my times tables by repeating them.
I remember hating every minute of it.
Math was
one of my better subjects up until about sixth grade. I didn’t love it, I was just able to do it
and get good grades. From what I can
remember it was because I did the work and memorized as I was told. As I got older, math class became a great
struggle for me. It made no sense, I
could apply very little to what was assigned and I lost a great deal of
interest in it. This carried on all the
way through the well-respected all boys catholic high school that I went to and
Jesuit College. Not even tutors helped
me to do more than just barely get by, especially when it came to
geometry.
Once I
graduated college and became an assistant at a prominent Montessori School in
Houston, my relationship with math began to change. The vast materials were amazing, life changing,
and the variety in which a child could learn how to do an operation was
mind-opening. Then I took the elementary
training course that summer. It was then
that I knew my life and my way of understanding math would never be the
same. Scratch that, not even my way, but
now there was a way that I did understand and memorizing did not matter.
As an
elementary teacher, I have become known as being very good at math and teaching
it. Something that I never would have
thought others would think of me. But, I
think there is something more to it and it is not really about me aside from a
couple of things. Parents of our present
children have horrible memories when it comes to learning math. What we are able to teach our children now is
mind blowing, but it has been around for over a hundred years. Most parents today do not realize that so
when they see their fourth year child starting to understand what the algebraic
expression of the binomial cube is, they are blown away because they definitely
did not learn and understand that in elementary, let alone at around age
10. This is not an exception to the
rule, this is the norm in an authentic Montessori program.
A call
to action would be to look for or make sure your child is in an authentic
Montessori program. One that encourages
different ways of learning and teaching it in more than one way. Not just with math. However, it is a shame to think that
something as universal as math is so misunderstood because it is so dominantly
taught by way of rote memorization. If
your child does not understand it, if you do not understand it and cannot apply
it to the real world, than what is the point, really? There is a way for your
child to be happy, to be educated. That
way is an authentic Montessori program where they can thrive and understand
what they are doing and why they are doing it. Learning is not merely a means to an end, but rather a journey that is rewarding, practical and enjoyable.
