Day Two

Now imagine if your poor brain got smaller and smaller every year.

Smaller and smaller, until finally it can do hardly ANYTHING.

Unfortunately in mathematics this can happen.

Maybe you don't need to be as clever as Albert,

But you don't want to be working every year with less and less of your brain.

Let's see what can go wrong.

You know that young children like to look at pictures:

[YOUR
FAVOURITE
PICTURE
OR CARTOON]

They know only very simple words: THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT

This means that when their teachers want to teach them something, they usually show them a picture:

2 X 2 = 4

So that children learn that this is what the picture should look like.

And if it looks like this: 2 X 2 = 5

It is wrong.

They don't need to know why.

They just need to know that it LOOKS WRONG.

Actually everyone learns a lot like this. It is very normal and very quick.

In a big class of children this is how most things must be learnt.

Perhaps the teacher has time to talk to one or two, but most of the time everyone is busy making sure that everything LOOKS RIGHT.

Then, most of the time, it is, everyone is happy. The teacher is happy. Children are happy. Mums and Dads and Uncles and Aunts. Everybody is happy.

Here they all are:

[ LOTS OF VERY
HAPPY PEOPLE]

But look at what is happening to those poor children's brains!!

Aaarrghh! Part of everyone's brain is falling asleep!!

See, it is mainly the left-side of the brain!

This is where thoughts are put together with words.

Of course you know that anyone can stick any old word with any old picture.

Over the page, for example, is a terrible snork fighting a horrible worble:

[TWO
IMPOSSIBLE
CREATURES
FIGHTING]

Since no-one knows what a snork or worble are, who cares what they look like!

But to say what we see with words that fit properly means using both language and logic properly.

Logic is the rules we use to make sense with words.

The left-side of the brain knows best how to manage language and logic.

They are both kinds of connections.

Language is for connecting brain to brain. Logic is connections in the brain.

Babies begin making these connections when they learn to talk.

Here is a baby learning:

[BABY
LEARNING
TO TALK]

If we do not talk carefully and logically about what we are doing,

And even worse - much worse - if we do not talk at all,

The part of the brain that makes these connections fall asleep.

Which means that the part doing mathematics is getting smaller.

This is how it happens.

[YOUR HEAD
GETTING
SMALLER]

[AND SMALLER]

[AND SMALLER]