Imagine if your high school math teacher approached algebra like the typical church approaches faith education.<\/p>\n\n\n
First of all, class would only meet once or twice a week and there would be no expectation of students doing any learning outside of class.<\/p>\n\n\n
The teacher’s sole approach would be lecture.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Correct answers would be supplied for every problem – no need for students to wrestle through any sort of practice exercises.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Worst of all, the teacher would skip around the math book, pulling out random, disconnected lessons from week to week. Today from chapter 7, next week a single equation from chapter 13, and then back to chapter 2 the following week.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The only thread tying the lessons together would be the fact that they all concern numbers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It’s fair to say that the students sitting under that math teacher would be thoroughly confused and constantly frustrated.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And bored.<\/p>\n\n\n
Week after week, they would be no closer to comprehending math than when they started.<\/p>\n\n\n
Along the way they may pick up some math terminology, but they would not grasp workable definitions.<\/p>\n\n\n
At the end of the semester, the teacher would still be the only one in the room who truly understood math.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
(If even he did.)<\/p>\n\n\n
And when all was said and done, most of the students would drop out of further math classes at the first opportunity – unless maybe they enjoyed hanging out with their friends in the class.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imagine if your high school math teacher approached algebra like the typical church approaches faith education. First of all, class would only meet once or twice a week and there would be no expectation of students doing any learning outside of class. The teacher’s sole approach would be lecture.\u00a0 Correct answers would be supplied for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algebra","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10163,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10162\/revisions\/10163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}