Comment by mschild
4 hours ago
Needs more research. Fully agree on that.
That said:
TV very much is the idiot box. Not necessarily because of the TV itself but rather whats being viewed. An actual engaging and interesting show/movie is good, but last time I checked, it was mostly filled with low quality trash and constant news bombardment.
Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to. Simple calculations I do in my head but my ability to do more complex ones diminished. Thats down to me not doing them as often yes, but also because for complex ones I simply whip out my phone.
> Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to
I got scared by how awfully my juniour (middle? 5-11) school mathematics had slipped when helping my 9 year old boy with his homework yesterday.
I literally couldn't remember how to carry the 1 when doing subtractions of 3 digit numbers! Felt literally idiotic having to ask an LLM for help. :(
On my part, I don't use that carry method at ll. When I have to substract, I substract by chunks that my brain can easily subtract. For example 1233 - 718, I'll do 1233 - 700 = 533 then 533 - 20 = 513 then 513 + 2 = 515. It's completely instinctive (and thus I can't explain to my children :-) )
What I have asked my children to do very often is back-of-the-envelope multiplications and other computations. That really helped them to get a sense of the magnitude of things.
I have a two year old and often worry that I'll teach him some intuitive arithmetic technique, then school will later force a different method and mark him down despite getting the right answer. What if it ends up making him hate school, maths, or both?