Some people “get” mathematical concepts without even being taught. Others need to think them through once…or twice…or many more times, before they make the necessary neural connections. But in my decades (I’m afraid to admit to how many decades!) of tutoring experience, I have yet to meet a person who couldn’t learn math.

I’ve worked with many, many, many students who have been identified as learning disabled, and it is my impression that differences in the speed and ease of learning are mostly due to normal, natural variations in the efficiency of this process. It’s too bad that we don’t have a system that allows people to learn at their own pace and within their own comfort zone.

In my last post, Understanding Learning Differences, I talked about the important distinction between Primary and Secondary learning. Primary learning (such as walking or speaking) happens naturally as part of the normal developmental process, whereas secondary learning requires neural rewiring in order to master non-natural skills (such as driving or reading or algebra).

It makes sense to have fairly tight expectations for natural developmental milestones. Because primary learning is innate, we can be on the lookout for capabilities to emerge at predictable ages. For example, a child typically walks at around age one and begins talking at about age two, and delays in acquiring these abilities should be treated with real concern.

But we shouldn’t expect secondary skills to roll out on the same predictable timetable. Milestones in learning non-natural skills such as reading and math should be expected to be much looser, and research shows this is the case in many instances. For example, “multiplicative thinking” (essentially the child’s understanding of the concept of multiplication) has been identified in some children as early as kindergarten, yet is not present in half of all fifth graders!

Often we shame or label or penalize students, simply for needing more time or repetition than average. Yet, we often don’t have a valid rationale or solid research to back up our notion of what “normal” or “average” should be!

Educational and cognitive research is revealing more and more information about how people develop and learn. One of the enormous implications is that our educational system needs to be renovated accordingly. We’ll never achieve the eduational goals we desire until we radically redesign our system to better meet the needs of individual human learners with naturally different human brains.

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (December 8, 2009)

Speaking of Love | Always Learning | Trends Online (April 17, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 31 Jul 2011