Pandora wrote:
With maths in the higher grades, I would have needed a personal tutor who could have sat next to me and showed me how to do the calculus etc. The textbooks were too hard to understand and so was the teacher.
Ironically, maths used to be my best subject in early primary school but that was the arithmetic side of maths. Having us learn by using the "discovery method" was disastrous for me because we were supposed to set out all our steps in minute detail and I could work a lot of it out in my head and took a great deal of exception to being marked wrong if I got the right answer but left out every second step.
Mr Zagami has a lot to answer for!
Indeed! My experience was just like yours. I developed such an atomic-level math phobia from being ridiculed for either not understanding the teacher's vague instructions or for not being able to "show my work" to suit their inane requirements. Between that and the requisite "girls aren't good at math" mindset back then, I was finished before I started. I now know that if I'd been able to learn math in more of a visual way, with more illustration of the actual concepts and instructions, I'd have probably "gotten it." It sucks.
07 Aug 2007, 4:16 am
