Back to school
When it comes to learning, make it playful
September. Back to school time. Although the heady days of what felt like our first proper summer since 2019 are over, I’m content to be back inside thinking about what reading, leafy walks and baked goods will sustain me in the coming months.
I’m not a school-goer any more, but am interested in how we learn and the best approaches to getting new stuff to stick long after the sponge-like state of childhood.
An 2014 Atlantic article by Luba Vangelova re-entered my orbit today, titled 5-year-olds can learn calculus. In it, maths educator Maria Droujkova says that the way many of us are taught maths – taking a linear path from arithmetic, to algebra, and eventually calculus – don’t account for how we think, and scrub the fun out of mathematics’ “playful universe”.
Rather than being given the freedom to explore the elegant patterns of maths through play, which furnishes children with a fundamental understanding of concepts they can then build on, students are expected to joylessly drill calculations. Is it any wonder maths anxiety is a thing?
Take this as a reminder that if you want to learn something, make it fun. Also, as someone taking an amicable break from study and preparing to resume a physics degree next year, I’m comforted and delighted by this vision of maths as a playground of patterns to be discovered, built and manipulated, like a big ol’ pile of Lego bricks.
reading list
A look at rurbanization, where underused city spaces are transformed into gardens and mini farms. “There were 15 years on the internet that were unlike anything else, and that I don’t think you’ll be able to really get unless you were there.” I asked for the vibes, not the weather. It’s really hot in California and the squirrels are splooting all over the place. There is simply too much to watch/see/listen to. Why not spend more time with the things you really enjoy and create some space to stumble over something wonderful?
something to chew on
In 2015, a new machine was installed on the International Space Station, which was developed following research into the principles of fluid dynamics. What daily ritual, beloved by Voltaire, Beethoven and Monica Geller, did this machine allow astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti enjoy for the first time in orbit?
a thought
“Although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation of our race.”
Charles Lyell, geologist (1797–1875)