FUNcoaching helps people make things fun again. Start here. Or maybe here. Then contact me. We’ll talk. We’ll play. It’ll be fun. In the meantime, let us blog….↓
{ 0 comments }
Here’s a little thought-provoking insight into how unprepared our schools are to nurture kids who genuinely love, and excel at math (and, for that matter, probably any academic discipline) – about the nurturing power of playfulness and community from www.wired.com
By the time Alison was 8, her folks decided it didn’t make sense to tell her to put away her calculus book to prepare for her multiplication test and pulled her out of school.
Homeschooling Alison (and later her younger sister Catherine, now a freshman at Bryn Mawr) neatly sidestepped one roadblock the Times story highlighted to keeping American students interested in math: social disapproval. As the Times reported, Chinese-American Dr. Zuming Feng, leader of the US Olympiad team, says that:
in China math is regarded as an essential skill that everyone should try to develop at some level. Parents in China, he said, view math as parents in the United States do baseball, hockey and soccer.
Dr. Feng says “Here everybody plays baseball,” Dr. Feng said. “Everybody throws a few balls, regardless of whether you’re good at it, or not. If you don’t play well, it’s O.K. Everybody gives you a few claps. But people don’t treat math that way.”
Can the U.S. school culture that values sports over math be changed?
{ 0 comments }