Rebecca Zook - Math Tutoring Online

I’ve been reflecting for a while why we need to be told that things are easy. I stumbled across Rafe Esquith’s discussion of the same conundrum in his book There Are No Shortcuts. I recommend the whole passage in its entirety (it’s in Chapter 2), but I wanted to share some of the highlights here:

…We have books entitled Algebra Made Easy. Well, algebra isn’t easy. Success at algebra takes hundreds of hours of hard work and disciplined study. I began to identify the problem the first year I decided to teach my sixth-graders algebra. They had mastered all of their arithmetic skills. They had a terrible time conquering algebra.

… When class began fifty-odd hours later, I laid out a better plan. There was a banner stretched across the front of the room proclaiming THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS. …from that day on, the dream [of life beyond the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Los Angeles] became closer, because that motto changed the way my students attacked their work. It brought a new approach to learning. …We decided to lengthen our school day. … [The students] spoke of sacrifice. … They not only rejected the culture [of everything being easy], they created one of their own.

I haven’t yet seen anyone else write so honestly about how challenging it can be to motivate students to persist when faced with difficult material. And I’m inspired by how Esquith succeeded in challening his students to do something that really isn’t easy. (I also think that this is the only stories I’ve ever read that connects the two things I do almost every day—teaching algebra and playing the cello!)

Thank you, Rafe Esquith, for all the work you do to inspire students to master what is not easy, and for sharing your experience with others.

Related Posts:
“Simple, but not easy” (1)
Ana Reynales earns her BA at age 82!!!!!

In her book Julie and Julia, Julie Powell makes a distinction between simple and easy. For example, making Potage Parmentier (French potato soup) from Julia Child’s recipe is simple—but not easy.

I think math is the same. After about eighteen years of doing algebra, I’d say it is now simple to me. But the process of learning algebra was not easy.

So why do we seem to crave reassurance that anything we might want to attempt is actually easy? Maybe we tell people “It’s easy!” to communicate that something is possible and that they are capable of doing it. Maybe it’s a way to take the sting out. Maybe in a culture of pigeon-holed specialization, we’re surrounded by too many tasks that just seem impossible to attempt without specializing in them ourselves.

But by saying this, it seems we’re sending a message to each other that we can only do things that are easy—not things that are difficult. And many things that are worth doing are, in fact, not so easy.

Maybe the real message we want to send isn’t, “this is easy,” but “this is possible and that you are capable of doing it.”

Related Posts:
Simple, but not easy (2)
Malcolm Gladwell on Math and Persistence (1)