Many people discuss IQ and achievement testing and scores here. How many of us know how to do more than calculate a GAI? We talk about scatter because we want to add to the conversation, and some of this seems to be based on remembering prior conversations of others, but many of us don't have an actual background in psychology to give a truly informed opinion. We've learned enough to do what we need to do-- discuss these things and help rank newbies a tiny bit-- but without developing any deep understanding, or the understanding of what a GAI really is, besides a substitute on a DYS application. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about-- imagine that knowledge of these testing constructs was one facet of math knowledge, and we were learning just the surface info in order to get through our self-selected project, never to return to the topic again. We'd be unlikely to return to the topic and deepen our understanding because it doesn't work that way-- you don't work backwards from an end result of a complicated learning process to the beginning, and lay a strong foundation in retrospect; and you don't even want to try, because it seems so frigging complicated.
Once in a while a highly interested person may decide to start at the beginning, by seeking out the knowledge at the beginning and following it through, such as a radically unschooled person winding up in college and finding that it behooves her to take remedial classes. However, that sort of thing may be highly unlikely unless forced by circumstances-- the radically unschooled person would be trained by that time to think of learning as a back-to-front and/or just-in-time, bare-minimum-necessary sort of activity. And if we accept that something like math should be known well by any student heading off to college, we really do a child a disservice by leaving it to them to self-teach math.
Yes, but how many of us actually
need to know more than how to simply calculate the GAI? There are a seemingly endless supply of things I could learn about, but there aren't enough hours in my entire life to actually learn about all of them. (This fact makes me feel frustrated and sad sometimes, actually, but I know it is true. I daydream about having the superpower to "read" an entire library of books just by walking in and looking at the covers. :))
Even school is a pretty bare minimum experience. You barely scratch the surface on most things until you hit upper level classes in college. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
And despite being fairly intelligent and attending math classes for 13 years, I still required remedial math classes in college. I had terrible math anxiety growing up and I thought it was because I was stupid and just didn't get it.
I took math because I had to to take other college classes when I went back to college at 22. I found out I actually liked it because I was so good at it. I took fast paced classes (much faster than anything taught in school) and picked it up quickly.
I know a lot of other students in my community college class were struggling (as far as I could tell, none of them were homeschooled), but it just showed me how unnecessary 13 sloooow years of math is. And it also showed me that we'll really learn things when we need them to do something else. This is an important point.
I also don't know if back-to-front learning is all that bad. I've learned many things that way. In fact, I think a solid interest in something and dabbling in it is what usually leads to deeply immersing yourself in it. It doesn't work well the other way around.
I'm running a business this way, right now. I start doing things and I find myself diving deeply into subjects to become better at the things I need to do (like coding, marketing, etc.) I will never be a pro at coding, marketing, customer service, or maybe at any of the many different "jobs" I am doing right now, but that is because I'm doing the jobs of like 15 people at the moment. If I didn't know how to teach myself, I'd make a pretty crappy entrepreneur. The suppose the goal is eventually to hire other people who have focused on only one of those areas.
If I had a business degree right now, I'd be long on theory (I feel pretty long on it right now with all the books I've gobbled up), but extremely short of real life experience. I realize degrees are useful for other reasons, but I'm just not convinced starting with the basics all the time is the fastest route to learning. It is hard to have passion for something when you can't understand why on earth you are being forced to learn it.
I have to just wait and see what DD picks up on her own. Do I need to drill the alphabet and such, or will she pick up most of it easily on her own? I'll have to just see what she does by herself. I'll supplement with some structured learning if I really think she needs it. I have no idea how I would have learned math if I didn't have it every year. I'm pretty sure I'd be less stressed over it, though. Grading a perfectionist in math when she is trying to learn new concepts (and is making mistakes) is a bad idea.
