Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Won't get easy work done

If the teacher knew that your brother knew more than s/he did, why did s/he fail him? Is the purpose of the class to learn calculus or to write stuff down the way teacher likes?

Richard Feynman talked about this idea in his essay The Making of a Scientist. Some older kids were doing 2x +7 = 15 and he said "X is 4" and they said "You did it by arithmetic. You have to do it by algebra." The implication was that he didn't understand algebra.

So he taught himself algebra and argued that the point is to figure out what x is, not to follow a set of rules blindly. He also argued that the rules represented a way to get the answer if you don't understand what you're trying to do. Then he gave examples of people who could "do" calculus --- by using the rules --- but didn't truly understand it.


Food for thought.

Val

I like Feynman a lot. His lectures on physics are treasures.

Like pretty much everything else he wrote. I was reading his description of the Challenger investigation and was struck by how wonderful he was. My favorite part was when he used ice water to test the O-rings. Brilliant!

Val

Wow, are you sure you aren't me? Calculus is what changed my Math/Biology major too my freshman year in college... not because I didn't understand it, or didn't get the answers correct, but because I was unable to show the "correct" work. For me, it was work on the computer, in a specific program. I could use paper and formulas all day long, but I could not translate it to the programs being used on the computer. And not to show my age too much, but I took a real typing class on a type writer when I was in high school, so computers weren't quite what they are today (or at least we weren't using them as we do today).

We've done a ffew things ever since K:

1) communicate with the teachers, and encourage DS to communicate with the teachers himself. Sometimes I feel that it si more effective coming from the kid than from the parents because some teachers just brush off the parents as being pushy.

2) tell DS that it is important to do the boring stuff right so that teachers believe him when he asks for more challenging stuff.

3) tell DS that not everything is interesting. Most of the time the work itself is not particularly interesting but it gets him to where he wants to be. Basically "we do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do". This is the kind of patience we need to train ourselves to have.

4) occasionally when DS is really bothered and can't seem to get over it, I'd do the work for him.

It works to a certain extent.

There is an interesting article in the 2e newsletter this week about how personality, level of giftedness, and gender can affect classroom behavior. I've never paid a huge amount of attention to Myers-Briggs testing, but according to Ruf, an FP (feeling perceiver) is more apt to refuse to do the work that is beneath him/her.

Both my sons absolutely fit these descriptions of kids who won't do the work to jump through hoops, or to please the teacher, or to get it over with, or whatever. If it's a "stupid" assignment, it is offensive to them personally.

It sounds like a few of us adults may have made similar choices as students, regardless of whether the choice "got us what we wanted" which is what popular child psychology seems to tell us is motivating our children. (Pet peeve here - I have heard that my kids "must not care, don't want to work hard", etc a few too many times. No one has ever said, "I'm so sorry that I offended your sensitive 7 yr old!"


http://www.educationaloptions.com/resources/resources_rufs_tips.php

Oh dear, Lauren. Sounds like a sadly familiar tale. I hope the new school goes well, but I'd be seriously planning to start homeschooling before the year is out, lest your little one's love of learning be crushed by these "professionals" who seem completely unable to think outside the box. Why should these poor kids be forced to sit and do baby work all day just so they can learn how to be bored later in life? As an adult, if you had to sit through unproductive meetings all day where everything that was covered was stuff you'd known for years, you'd go ballistic eventually.

I'd better be careful, or I could go on a (bigger) rant myself, lol.