How would a child feel about numbers if they had never gone through formal kindergarten education?8/1/2022
My daughter has been unschooled and feels just fine about numbers. They are not something to struggle with or be frustrated with. We use them as tools and explore interesting things about them as we do with letters and other things we use and interact with.
We approach numbers as something that can be useful in many ways. We use them to tell time, to measure for making a recipe, for counting how many hangers we need after we do laundry. We play games and do activities with numbers and other mathematical things such as graphs, charts, rulers, protractors, and so on. I suspect that many kids come by their hatred of math and numbers because of formal schooling. Numbers are often forced on them without any useful context and they learn how to add, subtract, and multiply by drills and memorization instead of by seeing how they can be useful. So, they develop math anxiety or math phobia and this stays with them well into adulthood. In my college teaching experience, I often saw students struggling with math courses and expressing their long-held dislike of math. This hatred most likely did not come from being homeschooled or unschooled. No, it came from formal schooling often imposed too early on children before they are developmentally ready to engage in formal learning. It’s a shame because numbers are so interesting and such an integral part of the world around us. Kids miss out on so much by only seeing numbers as things to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Instead, they could see them as useful tools that help them accomplish their goals and also as a beautiful language that helps us understand the world around us. Comments are closed.
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