Mathematical Rot Starts Early

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Mathematical rot starts early.

“Kids don’t really need to memorize multiplication tables.”

“They can just use a calculator.”

That’s where the decay begins.

But then…

Multiplication never becomes effortless.

Every calculation eats up working memory.

Factoring becomes a struggle.

Algebra becomes a slog.

Instead of fixing the foundations, people water down the classes.

Students become reliant on calculators to do what they can’t do by hand:

Graph.

Solve equations.

Manipulate expressions.

But moving students ahead without skills doesn’t work.

It doesn’t fix the rot.

It just allows the rot to keep spreading.

Every new topic sits atop a weaker foundation.

A Jenga tower that one day will all come crumbling down.

You don’t fix that in college.

You have to fix it where it started.

You have to fix the foundation.

Further reading:

• Cognitive Science of Learning: Developing Automaticity
• If You Want to Learn Algebra, You Need to Have Automaticity on Basic Arithmetic

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