They Had Termites in Their Foundation

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When a student hits a wall in math class, it’s usually not as sudden as it seems.

It might seem like they were fine all along.

Then something that they were asked to learn just made no sense, and 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 who never really masters fractions or even multiplication, but keeps on moving forward?

They get by for a while.

But eventually, the skill gap becomes so wide that they can’t hack their way around it anymore.

Maybe it happens in algebra.

Maybe in calculus…

On the outside, everyone thinks that calculus is the problem, right?

But it isn’t.

Calculus just exposed the damage that happened years earlier.

And 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.

Further reading: The Math Death Spiral: How Knowledge Gaps Lead to Student Failure .

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