Thinking about Math

When Soren was a toddler and Carl just a wee babe, Scott emailed me an article about math. It's not a particularly scholarly article and I certainly don't think its conclusion is particularly sound, given the scope of the "research", but it was certainly provocative. It's basic conclusion was that children didn't need to be formally taught mathematics in elementary school and could catch up (even surpass!) their peers very quickly at a later age. Scott attached some comment indicating his frustration with the years he wasted hating math in school.

I emailed back: "It almost makes me want to homeschool our boys." And thus our homeschooling journey began.

Since then, I have thought long and hard about the best way to teach mathematics to our children. It seems obvious to me that most public schools are not doing a good job and that something radically different is needed. Here are some of the ideas that really speak to me:

* playing games
* solving puzzles
* reading math classics
* teaching life skills: cooking, building, budgeting, etc.
* teaching formal logic
* teaching computer programming

If the kids are interested (or if they want to go to college), we could dive into a in-depth study of higher math. But if we do that, I would want them to learn more than just how to plug in numbers to equations. I will have to keep my eyes pealed for some truly awesome ways to teach higher math concepts rather than higher math computations.

Tomorrow I am going to post some of the articles and videos that have shaped my thinking on this topic. Please chime in with any thoughts you have!

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