Learning Mathematics in Ten Minutes A Day

Dear Parents

The purpose of this book is to help children learn mathematics more easily and naturally by showing them how to use more of the capacity of their mind.

This is not magic, only common-sense. In conventional classroom lessons children begin to learn by imitating patterns produced by their teacher. This is perfectly alright, up to a point. But if this is all that children ever learn, later on they will find themselves in deep trouble. By the time a child is twelve to thirteen, mathematics is producing so many patterns that only a few children can remember them all correctly. Mistakes start to appear. Anxiety, replaces confidence. Eventually failure and fear replace success.

Imitating patterns is not enough. To succeed in and enjoy mathematics the mind must learn the meaning of the parts that make up the patterns, and the logic that connects them. Without this virtually all of the brain that works with logic will remains unused. Imagine having an IQ of 140 and working with only half. This is what we are condemning children to do if we do not show them how to use all of their brain power.

Fortunately nature provides a method: by talking. Recent research, in for example the Department of Mathematics Education Methodology of the University of Budapest, has confirmed what was already apparent to the early Greeks two millennia ago, but which modern schools appear to have forgotten. The most effective form of mathematics education is open, critical, but unthreatening discourse in which everyone is encouraged to take part and no-one is made to feel stupid for making mistakes.

Could anything be simpler? Talking about what you are doing engages both the power of the brain to observe and its ability to describe what it observes. The best exercise of this is a dialogue involving the teacher and the whole class together. Most teachers will do this some of the time. But this book shows children how they can do it all of the time, becoming both their own teacher and their own student. Doing it also with the teacher then becomes a bonus. The text is intended for ten year olds and above. Please insist that one day's work is done at a time, preferably not more than a week apart; and that all the drawings are completed before the next day's work is begun.

Colin Hannaford.