How do you get to Carnegie Hall -- or a football championship? Practice, right? The same applies to learning math, writes Holly Korbey on The Bell Ringer. "The lack of practice in academic skills is one of the biggest obstacles to academic achievement, and maybe one of the easiest things to fix."
Korbey spoke to many parents, teachers, and researchers who agreed lack of practice is a huge problem, she said this on the Centering the Pendulum podcast. But she got pushback from educators said “practice wouldn’t help” get more kids to higher math.
Our culture values grit and hard work for some activities, she writes. Working hard to master football fundamentals is considered character building. Working hard in academics is seen as stressful and perhaps harmful.
Many fear that practice -- diagram 20 sentences, solve 20 math problems -- will turn off students, she writes. "Learning should be fun, this thinking goes." Students should be "engaged."
. . . when students don’t know the nuts and bolts of whatever subject they’re working on, the basic building blocks, it’s much harder to become successful at it . . . Building a store of background knowledge in any subject is the basic building block for developing innovative or creative ideas in that subject. And building those blocks can sometimes mean some un-fun practice.
"There’s also fascinating research suggesting that kids are more motivated when they are successful at the material, not the other way around," writes Korbey.
"Productive struggle" has been fashionable for years. But a lot of struggle isn't productive. It's frustrating. And not fun.