Math in the Slow Lane

Have you ever stopped to think about how busy the world is today? Work, school, sports, working out, other extra circular activities, hanging out with family, hanging out with friends, hanging out with your animals, meals, traveling… it can sometimes feel like a rat race with little time to ourselves or to even think of why we’re doing it all in the first place. Then we wake up and do it again. There are countless programs, exercises, foods, vitamins and activities that we have access to in order to help us stop and smell the roses for a bit, but it really takes effort in this world to be able to sloooooow down. And if you think about it, this pressure to run from one thing to the next isn’t just isolated to us. It transfers to our kids. As there is beginning to be more and more documentation about negative impacts that an unmanageable velocity has on all of us as humans, there is one subject we must talk about specifically that is being impacted – math, of course. 

Ironically, the exploration and discovery of math is the epidemy of everything slow. There are many math theorems (statements that have been proven to be true) that are difficult, intense and long. Things like Fermat’s Last Theorem, in which he stated “it is impossible for a cube to be a sum of two cubes, a fourth power to be a sum of two fourth powers or in general for any number that is a power greater than the second to be the sum of two like powers…” have taken mathematicians years to try and prove or disprove. Fermat’s Last Theorem was finally proven to be correct by Andrew Wiles and the help of one of his former students. The more advanced math gets, the slower it takes to solve and calculate problems. In fact, there are currently six known millennium mathematics problems that remain unsolved, some of which perhaps will be proven this century. The Clay Mathematics Institute has even offered one million dollars to anyone who can solve them. Some might be working on them, but even that can’t accelerate answers to math’s hardest problems. Math. Takes. Time.

When we talk about number sense at Mathnasium of Littleton, we are advocating for kids to have a good relationship with numbers and math and we encourage the joyful act of playing with numbers. We see lots of kids who come in stressed out about math. Some of them are particularly stressed about taking tests, while others have fallen behind in their classroom. Others we see need a greater challenge than what they’re being presented in school. What is consistent is that the joyful part of math is usually missing. And what’s also consistent is that kids feel rushed through math. 

You know that saying speed kills? It’s generally used for motor vehicles, but it can be applied here. Students are often rushed through mathematical discovery with having to answer questions constantly and test taking with limited amounts of time. The very root of mathematics being the art of explanation is jeopardized by students being on a clock all the time.  When you deny students the opportunity to make their own list of hypothesis and proofs, present their own problems, be creatively frustrated and be wrong, you’re denying them mathematics to the core. Some of the best problems in math are in the back of textbooks and they may take a few weeks to solve, but we most students are drilled on math’s greatest hits within an hour or two to test comprehension. Perhaps the real test would be working through weeklong problems.

Beyond kids just simply having more time to do math in school, it’s about learning to do it in a relaxed, leisurely way – where the joy part comes in. When kids are given ample time with numbers – to play around with them, talk about them, do stuff with them on their own time – a beautiful thing happens. They start to enjoy it. A happy adventure in mathematics is rooted in having time to play and understand and not feel the pressure that many classrooms have these days. That might mean sitting there, comfortable, for hours until things start to make sense and not being ashamed about it. This is where we come in at Mathnasium of Littleton. We provide guidance and mind opening ways of teaching that allow kids to work though problems on their own time. We don’t rush; we are there for your child to help them grow their skill sets and number sense. At the least, we want them to not despise math and at the most, to actually find joy and possibly love for math. Who knows, maybe they’ll be the one to win that million from the Clay Mathematics Institute.