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From:	Sharon (24.110.202.137)
Subject:	hmmm....
Date:	April 29, 2008 at 11:01 am PST

In Reply to: Are we teaching math all wrong? posted by Holly on April 29, 2008 at 7:36 am:

I love this. There is almost no acknowledgement of differing learning styles in any of these studies, as near as I can tell.

These folks are studying a method, and applying it to groups of students, and assessing the result. By contrast, homeschoolers get to know the *child*, decide on a method, and assess the results.

(Wonder which is more effective in communicating concepts to an individual student?)

Like the one guy said, "one size can't fit all."

What educators don't seem to want to discuss is that children are...um... individuals....and what "works" for Tommy and kids like Tommy doesn't work so well for Timmy and kids like Timmy. (Because you can't make those accomodations in large groups.)

When I tried using manipulatives with my eldest when he was in second grade (as instructed by the math program I was using at the time), it simply confused him. He had already "gotten" the abstract concepts. I was so surprised to realize he felt like a failure for not being able to discern some sort of "deeper" mathematical meaning in the red and yellow cubes! Did that mean the methodology was ineffective or non-useful? Of course not. I came to realize my son could not work with tools designed for a kinesthetic learner. They did not work for *him*. But I would never go so far as to say it was ineffective for some other child with a different learning style and/or different needs.

And there's a *reason* the sciences and physics offer labs to illustrate things, (fulcrums and levers, for example). Some students can see the underlying principles in their mind's eye or from prior real life experiences. Others can't. That's not much different than using real-life examples or manipulatives to illustrate and teach math problems.

Tailoring education to a specific individual doesn't fit the factory model of the educational establishment, but it is what makes homeschooling make sense.

Thank goodness we don't have to rely on folks like these with their studies and their arguments about how best to teach the masses!

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