Only by the grace of God
I have just finished going over prime factoring with my sister who is in grade 5. When I say going over, I really mean re-teaching. When I say re-teaching, I really mean trying to dissuade myself from talking tomorrow morning off to assassinate her teacher.
To refresh your memory, prime factoring is when you take a number, and break it down to its prime factors. . . oh, I guess I shouldn't use the term in its own definition. Basically, prime factoring looks a little like this:
Now, I don't know about you, but I didn't do prime factoring until grade seven. And I definitely did not learn it all in one day. And after my first day of learning prime factoring, I wasn't given a photocopied sheet of 30 odd questions to tackle, along with thirty other questions each for English, Socials, and Science to do for homework. And had I been given a sheet with 30 questions on it, it would not have asked me to find the factors of numbers like 1179, 6225, 1001, and 279.
Tell me, kind readers, could you figure out if 1179 was even divisible by anything when you were ten. And then, could you do the work to find out the answers for thirty questions like it in a reasonable amount of time?
And would your teacher, after countless complaints from the parents of the nine grade fives in her 32-student class, most of whom, despite prior success in school, are failing their way through grade five, would your teacher insist that she is doing nothing wrong? She is, after all, teaching from the curriculum. And then would your teacher, knowing that your whole family helped you finish your Ancient Greece project last week, and continues to help you every. single. night. with your math homework, would your deeply devoted teacher ignore the fact that none of the grade fives can prime factor to save their lives, and go on to teach another concept on Monday that is based on the assumption that you know that 1001 = 11 x 7 x 13?
And that 1179 = 3 x 3 x 131.
They tell you in Sunday School to hate the sin, not the sinner. And I know railroading ten year old children is probablly not a bonafied sin. But tonight I was almost ready to give up and hate the sinner.
g. mango does not know her 131 times table off by heart
To refresh your memory, prime factoring is when you take a number, and break it down to its prime factors. . . oh, I guess I shouldn't use the term in its own definition. Basically, prime factoring looks a little like this:
18=2 x 3 x 3
Feel free to marvel at my ability to find the prime numbers that multiply to make up 18.
Now, I don't know about you, but I didn't do prime factoring until grade seven. And I definitely did not learn it all in one day. And after my first day of learning prime factoring, I wasn't given a photocopied sheet of 30 odd questions to tackle, along with thirty other questions each for English, Socials, and Science to do for homework. And had I been given a sheet with 30 questions on it, it would not have asked me to find the factors of numbers like 1179, 6225, 1001, and 279.
Tell me, kind readers, could you figure out if 1179 was even divisible by anything when you were ten. And then, could you do the work to find out the answers for thirty questions like it in a reasonable amount of time?
And would your teacher, after countless complaints from the parents of the nine grade fives in her 32-student class, most of whom, despite prior success in school, are failing their way through grade five, would your teacher insist that she is doing nothing wrong? She is, after all, teaching from the curriculum. And then would your teacher, knowing that your whole family helped you finish your Ancient Greece project last week, and continues to help you every. single. night. with your math homework, would your deeply devoted teacher ignore the fact that none of the grade fives can prime factor to save their lives, and go on to teach another concept on Monday that is based on the assumption that you know that 1001 = 11 x 7 x 13?
And that 1179 = 3 x 3 x 131.
They tell you in Sunday School to hate the sin, not the sinner. And I know railroading ten year old children is probablly not a bonafied sin. But tonight I was almost ready to give up and hate the sinner.
g. mango does not know her 131 times table off by heart
POSTED BY G. MANGO at 17:20
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