Boys’ and Girls’ Different Math Strategies
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Surely most readers have had thoughts and observations about boys’ and girl’s differences concerning their typical learning strategies.
A reader (Susan G.) has been corresponding with Math Mojo for a week or so, and I’ve noticed that she’s made some great observations. She’s also written a e-book on word problems. I’m in the process of reading it, and it looks right-on-target. It will be a resource that teachers and home-schoolers will want to have.
I’ll be writing more about it in the future. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about it, please shoot me an e-mail (use the contact box on this page) asking about it, and I’ll put you in touch with her.
Susan had been kind enough to offer some of her expertise about education in general, and she’s been one of the readers who’s taken my request for proofreading to heart; she’s pointed out some typos in Math Mojo materials, which I’ll be correcting a.s.a.p. (Thanks for the heads-up on this stuff, Susan!)
She’s kindly given me her permission to publish some of the thoughts we’ve been sharing about math-ed.
Here’s and excerpt from a recent correspondence we’ve had:
Susan wrote:
Brian,
When I recently wrote,
-
“Do you have easy tricks for adding and subtraction? Girls don’t seem to mind learning the facts the “hard” way by drill, but boys like to think that they are cheating on the rules.”
I made a bald “sexist” statement. I was trying to save time and space. I think I should expand on it.
The matter of “cheating” is an observation I made in watching my son play video games. Along with the game, you can buy/download “cheats” which are sets of instructions that boost your “skills”. I think
this is done to make the game more exciting by making the player one of the “in-crowd”, but also to appeal to competitive needs.
I have also seen that many boys need the constant rewards that are built in to video games. Given a sheet of exercises, they will check at each one that it is right, and reward themselves with a little wiggle (the style varies with the kid). This little physical
activity gives them a break from “work”, but it also slows their “productivity”. If they waited to the end of the page to reward themselves with an air-punch or trip to the pencil sharpener or whatever, they might get a better reward, but they need that immediate reward.
Do you have any observations on this pedagogical issue?
Brian replied:
Yup.
Being a boy myself I’ve observed the same thing. It’s great to notice it, regardless of which sex you are. If boys and girls would notice the benefits of each other’s strategies, they wouldn’t have such a hard time understanding each other, I think.
I do think that both strategies have their advantages, and that neither is better or worse. But together, they are better than the sum of their parts.
The “instant gratification” thing doesn’t always slow productivity, I think. It’s like ADD in general. It can be a gift that leads you to produce things that you didn’t intend to. (If necessity is the mother of invention, ADD is it’s wild and crazy uncle Buck.) It’s what drives a lot of kids to explore.
Just like some stick-to-it-ness can make some kids drudges, too much exploration can lead to some of the negative symptoms of ADD. A good balance would be nice. I wish I could do that. I’m waaaay too unfocused. (But I like it!)
By the way, I don’t take any of this as sexism. They are tendencies. Not every boy and girl fits the pattern, and it would be silly to make assumptions about any individual kid’s learning style simply based on their sex. You and I know that, so we don’t have to worry about the “sexist” label, I hope.
You make very good observations, and I enjoy reading them. Thanks!
About easy strategies for addition and subtraction:
As a matter of fact, I have a whole lot of tips about addition. I’m getting ready to start a podcast and a free video course, that should take kids from 1 + 1 all the way to mental speed-addition of huge columns and rows.
It’s going to be the flagship of Math Mojo, to show how cool a math operation can be. I’ll be charging for the multiplication, division, etc. courses, but I think every kid in the world should be able to add with ease before they tackle the rest, so there’s no plans to charge for the addition course.
You can start with this web page about addition.
As far as subtraction, check the pages about subtracting from left to right.
Stay tuned to “The Math Mojo Chronicles” for more info in the near future.
Brian
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Comment by penny
Perhaps, this is due to the video games and not to the gender of the child directly.
In the days before video games, I recall that both boys and girls could concentrate and study fine, often for hours at a clip.
The original devil here is Sesame Street, which initiated the teaching by sound byte method–with the idea that learning was a lily that needed gilding with song and dance.
Life is NOT a video game–no, siree.
Professor Homunculus sez:
I’m with you on this one. (We are sooooo politically incorrect. I love it.) I think boys may have been a little more “hyper” than girls back in my day (pre-jurassic) but nothing like to the extent of today. And it seems like girls may be getting more hyper. Those are just anecdotal views, so I won’t be making any bets on it, but if I had to bet, I think that’d be the way to go.
I also remember that when I was a kid, I always wondered why I changed the TV channels so much, even if I was watching something I liked, whereas I could chose a book and read it for six hours straight, days on end until it was finished.
That’s not something I wonder about anymore. I am absolutely sure it’s got something to do with commercials, the nature of the Siren-song of TV “choice,” culminating with the “culture of the clip.”
Comment by penny
If you want to encourage math skills, buy your kid a Rubik’s cube ( with NO access to cheat sites), and a chess set with a CLOCK–for slow play.
Penny, ( Research mathematician and former member of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and the Max Planck Institute).
Kids need long blocks of unstructured, unpressured, THINK time–where slow, careful problem solving is a FUN activity.
We spend too much time structuring kid’s lives–and this is actually not a good thing.
Professor Humunculus sez:
Perfectly said. ’nuff said.
Comment by penny
Frankly, I don’t care if an elementary school child can add long columns of numbers in their head–it is an almost worthless skill. I do care if they can think about mathematical concepts.
Better to teach them to come up with simple proofs (not memorized proofs) of basic facts in math.
Better that they should understand what a prime number is, and why we care about prime numbers.
Better that they should learn to enjoy slow, deep thought about puzzles and concepts.
That is where the gold standard in math education is.
Professor Homunculus sez:
Penny, I agree that those things are “better,” I have some thoughts about the value of learning to add long columns of numbers in your head. I don’t think it should be de rigueur for all students, of course. But it had an amazing value for me, and when I teach it to “mathaphobic” children, it creates children who are suddenly less afraid of, and more interested in the other things you mentioned.
There are other values to it, as well. I will be posting about it soon, as I think there may be something in it for math educators and real mathematicians like yourself to consider.
Remember, this is coming from someone who has experienced a little of one side (understanding and appreciation of math) and a lot of the other side (knowing what it is like to be almost violently mathaphobic until deep into my thirties.) I may have a bit of insight about how to “cross the void.” That is the reason I created MathMojo. (As well as to learn more about math from the people like yourself who visit the sight and leave thought-provoking comments!)
Hotcha!
Comment by penny
My child once came home from school very upset, because she said that the teachers were teaching all these applications of math to daily life etc. She said she didn’t want to learn about grocery shopping or sales tax etc. She wanted to learn MATH in math class. I pulled her out of school, into homeschooling and started her on symbolic logic–she was eight.
She was not a whiz at adding numbers in her head–but by the age of eleven she was doing tensor calculus and asking deep questions about differential geometry.
She is now a molecular biologist. She is still no whiz at adding numbers in her head!
Comment by Susan G.
Some kids do have trouble getting into those number facts, but once they have them down, you can explore a great deal more. It’s all about solving life-problems. Now just going shopping, but contemplating sunflower heads, maps and Mayan hieroglyphs. Not everyone can see patterns, but those who can should be allowed to explore. Personally, I am a plodder in Math and have to see it on paper, but I love learning. Curiosity is essential.
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