too much info

My mum's (and actually mine as well) favourite subject, when she was at school was history This she would tell us often. We (her caring, loving children) would tell her that it was her fave because it was so easy - she was so old that history hadn't happened! Of course this ageist-cruelty was (because god is like that) bound to catch me up. Last week I was teaching Scientific Notation to a class of ten year olds. I was asked, as I am often asked, by a kid why, they had to learn it (this is a fairly regular question in mathematics lessons) and (for once) I had an answer that satisfied (as opposed to "because I said so"): You want to learn how to use a calculator? You want to be able to deal with really, really big numbers? You want to learn how to be accurate to the tiniest degree? Then Scientific Notation is the way to go! And so I was stuck in a classroom with a bunch of ten year olds dealing with numbers that ranged from huge (quadrillions? zillons?) to tiny (24 places behind a decimal point) and I started to realise the futility and stupidity of it all. Yes, they do need to know how to write a number in Scientific Notation but they really don't understand what they are doing.  Does a ten year old really understand a number bigger than 100? Hell, I'm not really sure that I can deal with the concept of a number bigger than 100,000 - as a concept.

When I was ten I learned how to use a slide rule - it was something that I learned to do outside of school (I was a bit of a geek) - but a slide rule was only good for numbers up to three digits big and even then wasn't that accurate. Logarithmic tables were good for four digit figures but I didn't get my first calculator (and I was one of the first children in my class to get a calculator) until I was 13. It was called a "pocket calculator" but 'desktop' would have been a better description of its size. I didn't use a computer until I was 20 - that's use! The University I was at had five computers!!! I didn't own a computer until I was 22. Didn't have a phone in the house I lived in, after I left Uni, for a couple of years. I remember having to run up the street to a call box to inform the hospital that I was bringing in my wife (at the time) for the birth of our second child. Didn't get a mobile phone (brick) until I was 34, didn't have an email address until I was 38. The majority of 12 year olds I know have mobiles, email addresses, myspace pages and their own computer.

Five years after Einstein published the theory of relativity only four people (only four) in the whole world understood it. It was just so mind-bogglingly different that the world's greatest minds couldn't come to terms with it. Now, 50+ years later I can quite casually explain that the "faster you go, the fatter you get" as an explanation of the theory as relativity (the faster you go, the more places you are in time - hence the fatter you are) that a ten year old can grasp the idea.

There are days that I look at the children in my classroom and wonder. I wonder when did our brains change? When did we suddenly discover the ability to cram so much more information into our minds? My grandpa was not a stupid man but I know that he couldn't deal with the world as it is today - hell, the first time he saw a motor car it had a man walking in front of it with a red flag warning people not to jump out in front of it!

There are days when I look around my classroom with awe. I don't think that when I was ten I had enough about me to live in this world, to cope with the amount of information we throw at children today. And yet, tomorrow I will sit in a classroom and teach ten year olds about Greatest Common Factors and Lowest Common Multiples and I will do it all in English. To a class of Mexicans. And on Thursday I will test them on it.

Makes me think.

Comments

[Croila]

OMG! Slide rules?? Logarithms?? I've heard my mother talk about them, but I wouldn't know a slide rule if it hit me in the face. But then again, I wasn't even allowed to sit O Grade Maths as I only got 12% in the prelim. I can't count. At all.

[Blue Witch]

Yes, yes, yes to all. Good post.