Originally Posted by Dude
Personally, I think the biggest issue with kids and Algebra is that we spend all those years beforehand teaching various methods of computation without really explaining why we bother in the first place.

Yes! I've been re-teaching long division and fractions to one of my kids this summer because the algorithms used in school are merely methods that work, with no real thinking required. I was amazed to see that his math book teaches long division the way I learned it in the 70s. All these years later, and no one has figured out that "2 goes into 2 once, bring down the 5" in 25/2 is a bad idea? My kids learn that 2 goes into 20 10 times, and 2*10 =20. Great! You've divided up 20 out of 25. Subtract, and you have 5 left to divide. And we do exercises with Cuisinaire rods to demonstrate what's happening in long division.

I've shown him the relationships that exist in and between different arithmetic operations, and a kid who detested mathematics is now telling people that he likes math. The other day, he complained that "I was really looking forward to learning something new, and it's over already."