Math Learning Shouldn’t Be Left to Luck

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My dentist was telling me how his daughter isn’t learning math at school.

She’s in 5th grade and when he asks her what’s 6x7 she takes a minute to compute and often gets it wrong.

Having himself learned math through calculus, he knows this bodes poorly for his daughter’s mathematical future.

And being a dentist, he has the funds to fix the problem by putting her in Kumon outside of school.

So that’s what he’s doing.

His daughter is lucky to have a parent who is academically in-the-know and has financial means.

Countless other kids are in the same situation and most of them aren’t so lucky.

When schools drop the ball on math learning, there’s typically nobody there to pick it up.

Typically, whatever math students don’t learn in school, they don’t learn at all.

And when a student doesn’t develop automaticity on lower-level math like arithmetic, they typically struggle to learn higher levels of math (seriously, beyond surface level, solving problems, and not just watered-down / cherry-picked problems).

For instance, solving equations feels smooth when basic arithmetic is automatic – it’s like moving puzzle pieces around, and you just need to identify how they fit together.

But without automaticity on basic arithmetic, each puzzle piece is a heavy weight. You struggle to move them at all, much less figure out where they’re supposed to go.

Further Reading: If You Want to Learn Algebra, You Need to Have Automaticity on Basic Arithmetic

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