Math-Tweets: Info Info Info

Math-Tweets: Info Info Info: Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information ...

Why Mathtweets

The idea of mathtweets took birth from a larger idea of redoing/ simplifying the primary curriculum for children.

When I used to help my daughter with her school studies at home – I used to simplify the stuff that was dealt with in the textbooks. The textbooks her school used were the new-age textbooks which had workbooks and even teaches’ guidelines.

But again it was the same old syllabus in a new form.The text books were preachy, coming heavily down upon the children, leaving no scope for them to think on their own.

The math sums were far removed from reality, For instance sums like a man had 350 monkeys as pets, a guy promised to pay 15 times the fee amount if he was happy with the carpenter’s work and such ridiculously unreal sums were mindlessly posed to children.

And in social sciences, the chapter on waste management dealt with it as though it was no problem at all to the people and as if incinerators were a boon to humankind as they magically solved the problem of waste.

There was no point in just simplifying the existing textbooks. A completely new syllabus keeping in mind the educational needs of the children in this dynamic age had to be structured.

It was also not enough to just write a textbook – The complete system required overhauling. The curriculum had to be drawn, textbooks, teachers guidelines, evaluation frameworks for teachers, lesson plans and a complete homework schedule had to be created.

The task of making such a big change was daunting. But making one small change in one subject was not. Hence this design which would help the children to learn things at home without expecting teachers, schools or parents to make big changes.

It is with this idea that Mathtweets was born

None of the above

In our math worksheets, sometimes there creeps a question where there is no correct answer given or the options given are all incorrect. It is actually an error on our part. If we have an option saying ‘none of the above’, it is okay, but if we don’t have one, the children are perplexed!

This reflects a psyche among us that every question must have a correct ‘prescribed’ answer. If there is no answer, then something is wrong with the question. The student and even the parent sometimes is so uncomfortable with such a thing, that they immediately need a correction of either the question or the answers to be completely satisfactory.

Or else there is this nagging doubt that lingers on whether they are correct.

But life is not like that. In fact life hardly ever presents us with a problem with all but one incorrect options. 

And the solution is more often than not ‘none of the above’!

Info Info Info

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information

Kurt Vonnegut
US novelist (1922 - 2007)

As I look around, I see children mugging notes for exams and parents prodding them to spend maximum time reading and reviewing their stuff only to regurgitate it during the exams on their papers.

Just the other day, one proud parent told me how his 10 year old son knows everything about cars and vehicles, and how he keeps amassing information from one encyclopaedia to another.
The boy also sang a couple of songs very sweetly, but immediately wanted to know who sang better - him or his sister. I was reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s assignment where he asks the children to do something just for their own self and not for praise or approval from others – the very rut we are stuck in.

"Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but RHYMED. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!
- Kurt Vonnegut"

Amassing information when it is so freely available to me is like stocking your kitchen with all kinds of ingredients to make the most awesome food, but not knowing how to make a meal out of it to make yourself happy!

While what you need is just a few things with which you experiment, create and make the most delicious things that you can be happy with.

Information is only useful to the extent you can make yourself and others happy.