Theory of Gravity - E-book - ePub

When my daughter Milla got down from her school bus shejust laid down on the sidewalk beside Sam, the neighbour kid. I had to convince her that you learn by doing and also thatshe was not not learning by letting someone else do herhomework. Later I was informed she that the reason for hernot to do her homework was simply a mental block that shedeveloped with Math. I told her math was a small step by step process and thattaking each small step would lead to success, but that gettingbehind would result in a mental block.
She said she had noidea how to subtract 60 from 80, but could easily subtract 6from 8. I had to inform her that all she need to do was to dothe operations with only 10 numbers that she needs tomemorize instead of each and every single problems that shecome across. For an example, I emphasized her the simple process ofsubtracting 60 from 80 is actually 6 from 8, 0 from 0 andthen getting 20 as two tens.
The mental block was already inaction, as was evident when I offered her a small calculator tohelp her learn math, it became apparent that she was confusedas to which way to read numbers. For instance, she wouldread 56 as 65. It was certainly not dyslexia for sure at this stage but aninferiority complex which compelled her to believe that sheshould know everything grownups does. I told her it is difficultto learn anything if you already know everything, as life is alearning process even for us grownups.
I also pointed out toher that she did learn, as when she correctly answered 11 plus4 as 15. The praise was to encourage her not to give up in the face ofdefeat; it was to provide her with the confidence she can findthe necessary steps to learn. Although some mistakes canunfortunately be fatal, I ensured her that those of us wholearn from them expected to taste success. Life is also alearning process, as evident with a historical evolution ofknowledge whereby we are either inclined to accept or denythe established theory according to faith or necessity.
Some ofus are more accepting; some of us insist on pursuing arationally full understanding of the world in which we live. Some of us know only what we have been told, while othersof us challenge what we have been told for moreunderstanding of it. The history of physics is a means ofunderstanding its development as a step by step process. However, the history generally contains the language similar tothat of spoken by mathematics and that is too foreign forsome of us to understand.