When I was in school, every math teacher I ever had got treated to the frustration of trying to make me show my work. I never knew how I got to the answers, I just did. There was no process to grade on the test, no way to see if I was doing it the right way. Not showing my work was, of course, a Bad Habit. Now that I look back at it, I think that life might have been a little less frustrating for my teachers if they'd had a little background on the way I work and what sort of personality I have. Being an INFJ, I have the habit of intuiting, of not knowing why, but just knowing. That was my problem in math.
My thought, then, is that instead of waiting years for university career counsellors to do the testing, people should be tested on day one. I suppose that means having five year olds doing personality tests, although I'm sure there's a more humane way to do it. Every teacher knows that different people learn differently. Why don't they act on that? If we could sort out how children could best succeed, and if they could be taught in an appropriate way, school might become a lot less frustrating for everyone involved.
My thought, then, is that instead of waiting years for university career counsellors to do the testing, people should be tested on day one. I suppose that means having five year olds doing personality tests, although I'm sure there's a more humane way to do it. Every teacher knows that different people learn differently. Why don't they act on that? If we could sort out how children could best succeed, and if they could be taught in an appropriate way, school might become a lot less frustrating for everyone involved.
Yes, and while you're at it, test them for learning disorders as well. It may seem like overkill, but the problem is that a lot of kids slip through the cracks because they don't "look disabled", and they're able to compensate well enough that they don't fall too far behind their grade level. But that still doesn't mean that they wouldn't be able to do better—and, quite likely, feel a great deal more confident—if they were provided with appropriate accommodations. Instead, they blame themselves; they think they're just stupidAnd the thing is, the screening need not be invasive or onerous; consider, for example, Brian Butterworth's Dyscalculia Screener. It's a simple, straightforward tool, and using it to identify a mathematical disorder early on can save a student from years of stress in math classes. The same argument goes for dyslexia and dysgraphia. Now, I'm not saying that every dyslexic, dysgraphic, or discalculic student out there doesn't get the help they need, but at the same time, I would say that enough such students fall through the cracks to make blanket screening worthwhile.Oh, and why don't they act on the fact that every student learns differently? Because the point isn't for each individual student to learn. See John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down.And, last, but not least, if we just let kids use calculators in math classes in the first place, it wouldn't be such an issue for the dyscalculic ones. Luddite teachers.