The Hidden Language No One Told You About
Math and science are generally considered the toughest subjects in school. They require an inordinate amount of practice to perform well, much more study time than other subjects and even if the student can “do” them there is a decent chance he or she is still not sure what is actually going on. The reason for this, however, is actually pretty surprising. Math and science are not difficult, they are a different language. The difficulty lies in learning to speak the language, not in the information described.
So what does it say?
The above problem is a common starting problem in calculus, a common first introduction to implicit differentiation. Everything in that formula has meaning, it is a language that must be read. Math condenses a lot of information into a single line of dialogue. The first line of algebra in that picture (the formula for a circle) would take me a paragraph to write out in English. The problem is your child has probably never heard that an equation is not a “thing” to work on, but a sentence to be read.
Anyone who has even attempted to learn a new language knows just how difficult it can be. If the language in question condenses a lot of information in nuance, like Latin and Spanish do, the barrier to entry is even steeper. Therefore, a language that exists for the purpose of abbreviating a paragraph’s worth of information into a single short line is bound to be a tough prospect. This is where we come in. We act as teachers, certainly, but even more as translators, turning the cryptic symbols into meaning. After the meaning has been translated we often find students have no trouble finishing out the rest.
The problem is this isn't hard
Believe it or not: You’ve seen this before
This problem should be familiar to pretty much anyone who has ever taken high school chemistry. It’s just the reaction that makes ordinary table salt. Given a certain amount of product, how much reactant (or material) did it take to produce it?
The strange thing is most people can figure things like this out when the problem is stated in macro terms. If instead of formula units you had a certain dollar amount, and some coins you could pretty easily figure out some combinations of coins.
So why can’t normal students solve this easily? The answer is actually quite simple: to them it’s just an alphabet soup.
All problems shown on this site are shots of real classes or recreations of problems I have explained.
This is Calculus
Imagine for a moment if this is what your child was learning calculus, or at least the derivative portion of it, actually is. Instead:
Same thing in the classroom
This is Physics
This is projectile motion. Despite how obviously simple it is, this is how you can expect it to be taught:
Same thing in the classroom
So why is it so hard?
Schools in our time teach us to think with formulas. This is a very efficient way to get a group of people to regurgitate the right answer, but it fails miserably as a way to actually teach. Students who learn to solve problems by looking for a formula to use will rarely be able to solve original problems because their concept of learning is less exploration and more copy/paste.
That’s where we come in. After well over a decade of teaching/tutoring we’ve realized that the only way to consistently improve scholastic performance is to do the school’s job for it. We will not simply clear your child’s doubts, although that is always the first step. We will explain from the ground up where the formula comes from, why it works, and common pitfalls they’ll run into if they take the formula for granted.
If you are interested in seeing some of the issues I’ve seen with modern schooling click here. Or if you are ready to try you free first class click here.