When I was in early elementary school I went to a Montessori school, where the whole theory was that everyone would learn at their own pace (this works better in theory) but then they … ran out of math … and didn’t know what to do because everyone agreed that ‘stick this tiny child in a class with middle schoolers’ was a bad idea
2 Likes
if you don’t have all the math credits you need to graduate high school by halfway through seventh grade you’re not a real math person
ah summer classes.
i coulda actually done alg2 over the summer but i didn’t want to be in a fucking math class with seniors freshman year.
ah you see, you probably still are, you’re just measuring wrong
being good at math is more an ability to learn fast, rather than just how much you’ve learned
and also some pattern recognition/sorta creativity but those just end up factoring into learning quickly anyway
If I had made my school count every math credit I could have made them count I would have graduated with 13 math credits (the weird program I was in let us do some complicated double-counting stuff)
I had them leave everything before high school off my transcript as was the default but in theory I could have had 13
im good at math but formulas make me cry.
Like i can solve problems but my teachers always make you used these fucked up convoluted formula that leads to a 78 on a test where you got 95% of the questions right because you didn’t use a stupid formula that they use in fucking france.
1 Like
I went to the prinicpal on that one because it’s bringing down my grade hard but nothing
the thing is tho theres a reason they ask you to use a particular formula most of the time, as it can later be generalized or expanded, to help you better understand a new concept
now if only they could actually explain their reasoning rather than just expecting you to memorize and move on
2 Likes
Yeah i get that. Like you do something simple but then it helps you later.
but when there are just different ways to solve a promblem and she teaches all the methods to find which one works best(which i support highly) and you are forced to use a method that doesn’t work for you, it gets really irritating.
she also won’t let you summarize when showing your work. you show every step or none at all. Even if it’s as simple and pointless as writing 4^2 as 4x4x4x4 you will get points off.
it’s just really frustrating
like not even kidding half the reason i was able to stick it out to where i am now was that i looked into it in my own time, so i essentially had snapshots of future concepts, and little bits of their formulas, so when i saw the ones they gave us i essentially figured out why the formulas are what they are, and i just used that knowledge to re-get forumulas rather than sitting down and memorizing them
dont even get me started on when they give you a formula but dont explain why it is what is, like how it was derived, or just how it works to get the answer. hate that freaking synthetic division
oh to get around that i learned a little bit of proofing so at the start of the test i just made a proof that shows how my method works exactly the same, and just essentially put re: proof every time i used it for steps or something
1 Like
they cant penalize you for not showing work when you learn more work to subvert the work they want you to do.
