Foundation Termites
(Note: This is an AI-assisted teaser for my prior manual writing. If you like it and want to read more details about this topic/perspective, then check out my 100% manually-written blog and books!)
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When a student hits a wall in math class, it’s usually not as sudden as it seems.
It might look like they were fine and then just one day hit a wall.
Something they were asked to learn just made no sense. They couldn’t move beyond it.
That’s what it looks like on the surface.
But typically it’s more like they had termites in their foundation.
Termites don’t destroy a house overnight.
It takes years of them eating away underneath the surface before you really notice anything.
Math gaps work the same way.
A student never really masters fractions or even multiplication, but they just keep moving forward.
Then they reach calculus, and they can’t simplify algebraic expressions, much less think about integration techniques.
The skill gap is so wide they can’t game or hack their way around it anymore.
On the outside, everyone thinks calculus is the problem.
It isn’t. Calculus just exposed the damage that happened years earlier.
Just like termites, you can’t solve the problem by covering up the visible damage.
You have to eliminate the problem at its source.
The kid’s gotta learn their foundational skills.
That’s the only way to solve this problem.
Here are the 100% manually-written long-forms that this teaser is distilled from, if you want to dive deeper:
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