How to Teach Mathematics Proficiency: McGraw-Hill PreK-12, 05/06/2015

When you think about innate ability versus experiences, many of us think again that that some people just have it and it's inborn. So if you think back, if you've ever seen the movie about Mozart called Amadeus, the whole movie is built around the idea that Mozart was just gifted and didn't have to work at it. Indeed it just came through God into Mozart's head right on to the pen and he just wrote, he never

Revised, he never, you know all this kind of stuff. It's interesting that the research shows that that's just not a viable explanation. Mozart started composing at a very young age, at the preschool age. But when you look at what he produced at that time, most people would say it's totally unacceptable - there's nothing there

anybody would want to listen to. But he had hundreds thousands, tens of thousands

of hours of practice by his teenage years where he started producing stuff that impressed people. And then for the last rest of his, unfortunately, short life, he was a brilliant composer. But it was because he had the opportunities. People that worked with them opportunities to practice, encouragement, an environment that encouraged that kind of stuff. It's not dissimilar with mathematics. We would

have many more musicians and many more mathematicians if we understood that

it's not just a few gifted individuals that can do mathematics. Everybody can do

mathematics if we provide them with the educational experiences and the

encouragement and the varied kind of exposure to different areas of

mathematics. Not goodness knows, you know, just writing down long sums. A hundred years ago that was valuable. It's not valuable mathematics anymore. It's a

little piece of mathematics, but it's not all of mathematics and should never have

been, but certainly isn't. In this day and age that that it's those experiences that kids get over a long term that lead to kids getting good at mathematics and skill usually precedes effect. In other words, know ahead get in the knowledge and getting the skill will lead to kids who like doing mathematics. It's not the kids they have to love it

at the beginning. We try to make it as interesting to kids as possible. But we also just need to keep it up with all children, to give them the kind of experiences and opportunities to learn mathematics so that they will indeed

come to love it as others, too.