Studying math is no mere numbers game
By Iwan Pranoto
BANDUNG (JP): It was interesting to read "Abacus adds up to 'smarter kids'" in The Jakarta Post of Jan 3. The article reported that using the abacus could exercise and develop the right side of a child's brain.
Moreover, a healthy brain was able to "optimize", among other things, logic and analytical skills, imagination and idea generation. It was also mentioned that there were no medical studies supporting the aforementioned hypotheses.
Many mass media covered this public demonstration of using the abacus discussed in the article. None other than the Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro officiated at the event. In his opening speech, he said that the abacus was a helpful medium for children to learn math.
He added that the abacus can "help children think faster, more accurately and analytically".
The perspective may be interesting in the debate on getting children to study math, but we also have to take into account the style and time devoted to learning the subject.
People learn math in the same style as other subjects. This consists of experience, experimentation, contemplation and conceptualization. One has to redo the ordered activities to continuously improve learning capability.
Most people learn math in this same order and start from experience. It is rare to observe inexperienced math learners start instantly from conceptualization. Most kids learn math using the same order mentioned above, beginning from the experience.
In arithmetic, we start learning from experience as well. We may recall how, in the old days, we learned arithmetic by first practicing to count using marbles or small bamboo sticks. This activity is exactly the experience mentioned above. We did not learn arithmetic by directly using symbols of numbers or plus and minus signs.
Experience in counting is necessary in the math-learning process. It is like getting one's hands dirty before becoming an experienced manager. A person cannot graduate to doing abstract things if he or she has never experienced realities. And we know that mathematics is about modeling with abstracts.
In our schools and education system today, it seems that we have neglected the experience and experimentation activities. Teachers inundate students with heaps of material in a very short time since they have to follow an unbelievably heavy curriculum.
As they are taught so fast in order to meet the stipulations of the curriculum, students do not have time to actually learn the fundamentals. This means students bypass them in memorizing mathematics when mathematics is not about rote memorization.
For example, elementary school students nowadays learn arithmetic by memorizing addition and multiplication tables, evident by graphs posted on classroom walls. They have to store the information that 1 + 3 = 4 in their heads. They have never had the practical experience of adding one bamboo stick plus three bamboo sticks.
Math learning becomes an activity of memorizing rules and facts. It is remote from the real mathematics culture, and is a sad situation indeed.
We all realize that counting is a part of math learning, but the skill of counting itself is secondary to the math-learning process. It is not that important whether one can add seven-digit numbers in seconds or not. This is the problem that some mathematicians can identify upsetting the math-learning process in Indonesian elementary schools.
The immoderate focus on the importance of the abacus in the article is an example of the simplification in the math-learning process in Indonesia. We know that learning math is relatively simple, but it cannot be simplified to constitute the skill to utilize an abacus.
To be able to add seven-digit numbers in a snap has nothing to do with learning ability. In the mathematics community, there is a joke about this: "There are three types of mathematicians, those who can count and those who can't".
Motivating kids is a good way to help them learn math. Every kid can be good in math if he or she has motivation to learn. We parents and teachers are only facilitators for their learning. Kids who have high motivation to learn can easily reach the moment of learning. This is the moment when learners know what and why they learn.
At this exact moment kids learn effectively. If we teach kids arithmetic by stressing too much the unimportant and unrelated skills, like using the abacus or memorizing tables, we do not provide them with a quality math-learning process. The kids would do much better if we let them experience and experiment through informal activities.
We should not rush them into formal mathematics concepts. Let them develop at their normal pace, not ours. In my very humble opinion, we should return those bamboo sticks to our kids for them to learn through experience.
The writer is a math teacher residing in Bandung.