ShowerThoughts

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Sometimes we have those little epiphanies in the shower.. sometimes they come from other places. This is a home for those epiphanies.

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csm10495@sh.itjust.works

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With modern technology, you technically don't need to know anything to be a basic math teacher (lemmings.world)

submitted 1 day ago by Lilyunad@lemmings.world to c/showerthoughts@sh.itjust.works

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Can you count? Do you know all the math signs and how to do PEMDAS? Then you know all the things you wouldn't otherwise know without a guide or a calculator.

Need to instruct a student who asks you a stumper? You just need to know how to formulate and can use a guide or a calculator to help you if you had to.

Not good at math without one? You could chalk it up to everyone having days like that, as it's not like you could expect a school to remove you because of brainfart.

If you became any other kind of teacher (English, history, science, etc.) you would need to build up a starter pack of knowledge on the subject, such as different obscure forms of grammar or what happened during the war of 1812. With math, you aren't expected to be perfect since it's a circumstantial mental skill, and when you subtract that from the equation (no pun intended), you can have any skill level that allows you to pass the instructions on how to perform equations to the students.

You also don't have to know what everything means, since there are things that we take for granted only advanced math classes will teach you.

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[–] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you can't do math without a calculator then how do you know that you are able to use a calculator correctly?

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or even just the basic rules of math itself? Identity rule, Inverse rules, Commutative property, Associative property, Distributive property... There's a lot of rules that prove and create stable ground for you to accept and understand PEMDAS/BODMAS.

Simply knowing one thing doesn't prove that one thing.

All of these "rules" come up when you learn order of operations and have nothing to do with "advanced math classes".

This shower thought seems grounded heavily in ignorance of math.

[–] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

That's funny, I thought it was mainly grounded in ignorance of teaching (but maybe OP means that teaching math is where you can fake it most easily)