Kids Like Arithmetic.

I was reading HOW MATHEMATICS HAPPENED over the weekend, and the author makes the utterly clueless statement that "children like learning to read and write, as it's based on speech" while disliking math because it's confusing.

This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. My biggest, most hellish, 'this-is-death' subject is reading and writing. Everyone here hates it with an almighty passion. Mostly because it does not in any way reflect how they talk. When I have kids coming to school arguing with me that words like 'ain't' and phrases like 'don't got' are perfectly proper English, there is a problem. The material being presented to them is literally a foreign language. They can't make sense of it. They love, love, love to talk, but they absolutely hate reading with a fury that has to be witnessed to be believed.

But this same group likes math and science... significantly...

...up to 5th grade. And then they simply hate school altogether.

So what does this mean? I think it means a loss of understanding, which is in itself a loss of control. These kids love counting, addition, subtraction, the basic stuff; the Neolithic pebble count, the half-moons scored on a reindeer bone. They love all that stuff, and for the same reason early humans did: it gives them a qualifiable sense of control over their environment, and therefore over their lives.

But when you introduce abstract concepts, algebra, fractions, etc. it all falls apart. The love of numbers is lost. And I strongly suspect it has to do with that loss of control: to try to imagine an unknown ruins it.

I'm thinking about that today. I'm glad I read that book.