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Some of us were lucky and some of us were not as fortunate. The lucky ones encountered a teacher in the early grades who made arithmetic interesting and fun. And that made a world of difference in the later years.

A study released this week confirmed what many parents suspect: that the quality of the teaching of math was not adequate:

“WASHINGTON, D.C. - For kids to do better in math, their teachers might have to go back to school.
Elementary-school teachers are poorly prepared by education schools to teach math, finds a study being released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.”

link: Study: Teachers don’t learn enough about math

If the basic skills and attitude are not acquired in the early years, it becomes more and more difficult each year. The lack of fundamentals is difficult to overcome. Our school was fortunate. We had a teacher who knew the first hundred numbers of pi by memory. She taught the magic of the golden mean and how phi was everywhere. We learned how to win more often at cards. It was fun. It didn’t seem like arithmetic. Most of us never forgot; and we know now how very fortunate we were.

Catherine Forsythe

Tags: mathematics, schools, skills, teachers

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