Do you have smart but dumb parents?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
21

<p>

I’m not sure how judgmental this is meant to be (between “I thought it was kind of ironic” to “how did they ever become teachers”), but, speaking to anyone, if you think less of someone for not coming up with an answer to a simple problem as quickly as you can, I hope you realize some day how petty and self-important you’re being.</p>

<p>There are many reasons why someone who is capable of understanding a problem needs a bit more time to realize the solution. Maybe he’s sleep deprived. Maybe he was on a train of thought that just got interrupted. Maybe he has the answer automatically but is hesitant because of uncertainty. Maybe he doesn’t know as many shortcuts in mental arithmetic because calculators make them unnecessary. If you jump to the conclusion that he’s just bad at math, that’s a good indicator that you’re trying to compete with people and you want a leg up on someone to feel better about yourself.</p>

<p>Go to a culture where children regularly use an abacus to learn mental arithmetic. Compete with them; then we’ll see who is ditzy.</p>

<p>Also, I’m not sure if “to forget math” is meant to go along with poor mental arithmetic. If it is, then you’re buying right into the common misconception of what mathematics is, automatically showing that you’re worse at mathematics than someone who understands why you’re wrong. Mental algorithms are secondary to the logic from which they are derived. I would rather understand the nature of the algebraic structures that form arithmetic and how they compare and contrast with other algebraic structures than be able to subtract numbers when I don’t have a calculator.</p>

22

<p>I’ve learned to never ask my dad for help with math. </p>

<p>He was a chemical engineer, and whenever I ask him to help me, he quickly solves the problem and gives me the answer. When I ask him to explain it, either he gives me a blank stare and tells me to leave, Or he gives me such a complex answer that I give him a blank stare, then leave. </p>

<p>Bottom line: ask mom.</p>

23

<p>i remember my mom corrected some of my essays when i was younger. my memories are all of frustration! mine and hers. looking back i wish she never did that. i didn’t really see back then how hard she worked. but to think she came home from her work (which was demanding - she was a field nurse when i was growing up) to have to try to go over an essay of her son’s with him makes me sad. she’s smarter than average but that’s not really the thing you notice about her because she actually has a warm personality, which seems much more defining. i WISH i inherited the warm personality but i only got the above average intelligence.</p>

24

<p>

Another point: if you’re learning from someone, that person’s ability to teach the subject unduly influences your perception of the teacher’s internal understanding of the subject.</p>

<p>I’m honestly disappointed by the sentiment of this thread, not that I expected better. But in a discussion focusing on people who are surprisingly “dumb” as the title says, there is at least the potential to focus on intellectual attributes that truly matter: passion for learning things without obvious application, capacity to understand the inner workings and meanings of systems beyond their consequences, etc. But instead, the focus has been on proficiency in following banal procedures.</p>

25

<p>

</p>

<p>haha cute.</p>

26

<p>“i didn’t really see back then how hard she worked. but to think she came home from her work (which was demanding - she was a field nurse when i was growing up) to have to try to go over an essay of her son’s with him makes me sad. she’s smarter than average but that’s not really the thing you notice about her” </p>

<p>Awwwwwwww…You’re not too shabby.</p>

27

<p>

</p>

<p>me too. the way you said it sounded romantic. but i don’t think it’s any of my business doing that. what if i gave myself a mini stroke by accident because i didn’t think properly but i didn’t know it because, being small, it was one of those silent ones without symptoms. then what if i kept doing that but not noticing it. i think there are prophylactic arguments in favor of sticking to such mental exercises as subtraction.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>this thread can be about anything, EVEN WAFFLES. don’t be disappointed, THERES WAFFLES. cheered up?</p>

28

<p>Self-important? I never even mentioned I could do it faster than him, just that he was doing it fairly slow. And honestly, if they are taking more than 3 seconds on a two digit calculation, they need to polish up on mental calculations…
Sleep deprivation, no matter to what extent, assuming it’s mild, can make someone go 3+ seconds on these mentioned arithmetic problem every single time. A mentor, no matter what level, shouldn’t hesitate too much on the subject being taught, else it signifies a non true understanding of the subject.</p>

<p>I have not jumped to any conclusions.</p>

<p>In fact, you are the one who’s making them all; I’ve never once said he was bad at math. Lacking in agility maybe, but that does not necessarily mean one is bad at math.
In no way am I trying to compete with others or try to make myself feel better. Why would I compete with my mentors? I need no reason to make myself feel better. Life is life.</p>

<p>And when have I said anyone is “ditzy” or a synonym?
I’ve never once said that I am better at math than anyone. Again, you’re the one jumping to conclusions.</p>

<p>And yes, I admit, someone who has had years of practice with the holy abacus will always be better than me, because I rely on calculators sometimes, and those who use the abacus regularly have my respect.</p>

<p>On your last example, very beautifully said, but the two do have some correlation, be it you like it or not.</p>

<p>Also, I thought it was obvious what I meant? I don’t know about you, but I use math just generally, so if there was any misunderstanding, let’s clear that up.</p>

<p>And, it sort of bothers me that you take such an offensive stance when I have done nothing to provoke you intentionally.
You seem to like to call me narcissistic, per say, but reading through your post, you seem to like to call me inferior and then to comment on how I am worse at mathematics than “someone who understands why I’m wrong.”</p>

<p>Good night…</p>

29

<p>I agree.</p>

<p>Math is all about the beauty in the equations, and the theories.</p>

<p>It’s elegant, really.</p>

30

<p>My parents are soooo dumb.
They can do arithmetic and long division, but that’s about it.</p>

<p>Sin? Huh? Whaa?
Integral? HuH? Whaa?</p>

31

<p>

I LOVE WAFFLES. Thank you for cheering me up!</p>

<p>I’m curious about the mini-stroke analogy, though. What kind of thinking are you referring to that is hard to notice and can lead to a mini-stroke?</p>

<p>Kommand, although you wasted your own time by ignoring my disclaimers and my clarification of the pronoun “you”, I have no interest in spending mine to respond to most of your post.</p>

<p>Other than that misunderstanding, there is the issue of mental agility. I don’t buy the assertion that hesitation is a sign of misunderstanding material. You’ll have to support that claim if you want to sound convincing. And deal with the counterexample of a dyslexic English teacher who appears incoherent to the casual observer but, given time, can beautifully use the English language via refinement.</p>

<p>That’s a start to deconstructing my contempt for children who call their parents dumb for not-so-instantly recalling what they (parents) learned in school and not-so-easily applying it to their (childrens’) homework.</p>

32

<p>yeah i don’t think the tone of halogen’s post to kommand who is only a seventh grader (!) was the nicest and neither was calling him petty or self-important. if you are a very bright kid like kommand and your teachers, who are supposed to have authority and know things, and might act like they do, can’t do something as seemingly simple as add or subtract with ease, than i can see how that would seem a bit odd. they demand so much respect but they can’t even subtract! WHAT IS THIS LUNACY. it’s a weird position to be in, as a competent kid surrounded by adults which don’t seem to be as competent as you were led to believe or as competent as they present themselves. i think his feelings come more from there rather than from <em>wanting</em> to judge people based on their ability to do mental math because he’s good at it and they’re not, because that seems like a silly thing to do, even to a seventh grader. of course you’re not supposed to do things like complain about your teacher’s mathematical abilities because their lack of them is frankly astonishing to you, as that’s perceived as rude, but being so young he also has a lot of time to figure out what it might be better to keep quiet about, even on an internet forum…</p>

33

<p>

</p>

<p>well cranial blood flow is strongly determinant of strokes. just the simple measurement of blood pressure is tightly linked to stroke risk - for every x decrease in that, you get a substantially reduced risk for having stroke of any type (the vast majority of strokes are small enough to go unnoticed). now, thinking modulates the flow of blood in the brain, right? and algebraic structures are pretty immense daunting objects to be thinking about. so it worries me that doing so, if you’re not properly trained to think about such things, could induce a lowgrade stroke without you being aware of it. i wasn’t really using an analogy to them, i meant a real one, which is why i’m going stay away from too much abstraction. remember what happened when humans tried to teach chimpanzees to count, or to vocalize and then when that failed sign language? it was muddled in controversy, scientific fraud, confusion, and gave a lot of those involved (the least of which being the poor chimps!) a big headache. this is the same reason why teaching humans abstraction should undertaken with some care and discretion i think.</p>

34

<p>Now I understand the stroke point. It’s been debunked.</p>

<p>Okay, a kid can wish his teachers (from school teachers to parents trying to help with homework) were more competent instead of wanting to feel better than them. It’s still a perception issue. Children have a very limited perspective of any given subject and they give undue importance to what they consider the ‘foundation’ of mathematics – what they learn in elementary school – when what they really learn is mostly mental algorithms and a few rules that tide them over until they learn the true foundation of mathematics later in life if they choose.</p>

<p>This leads to the presented scenario: a child who is actively learning arithmetic techniques asks for help from a parent who no longer needs to use those techniques (thanks to calculators); the parent can’t help (or could help, given proper context); the child silently judges the parent to be incompetent.</p>

<p>The same applies to any subject with both depth of specific techniques and breadth of overall understanding, where the child is working on something specific and the parent has a broad understanding.</p>

35

<p>Halogen: I don’t think that people are judging- the topic was brought up and people are like, oh, yeah, that happened with me when I tried to ask my mom for help with my homework- that was funny.
At least, that was me…
Whoever mentioned about insurance- my mom worked for a while as a financial counselor- sort of like a private personal finance teacher for families who need help with that kind of thing. (The limit in math for that is knowing how to ±x/ with multi-digit numbers, which didn’t help me with my Algebra 2 :).) She’s definitely going to be able to teach me all that stuff, and yeah, right now, she doesn’t need the quadratic formula. Honestly, I’m jealous of her that she doesn’t. I’d give anything not to need it.
This is for my funny(ish) stories. Obviously there’s more to my parents than all that.</p>

36

<p>

</p>

<p>Yeah, that pretty much sums up the point of this thread. Sorry if I offended anyone by calling my/other parents “dumb,” but I meant “dumb” in an endearing way rather than a judgmental one.</p>

37

<p>While we’re on the asking for homework help topic–One time I asked my grandfather, who is a metallurgical engineer and math whiz, for help on something for math, and I swore to myself I’d never ask him again. Oh, he explained it all right, but explained it in college level terms that I didn’t understand (I was only about 13 at the time) so I ended up even more confused. All I wanted to know was the answer…</p>

38

<p>@Halogen,</p>

<p>That was a well-thought out post indeed. However, I do not have the time or need to reply to your posts…</p>

39

<p>It’s probably been quite a while since your dad has done something like that, OP, so I’m assuming he’s forgotten. A lot of parents forget more of the basics as they age, from my experiences. I mean, my stepdad is a psychiatrist, and he knows basically a ton of stuff in psychiatry, and he’s probably one of the leading psychiatrists in my region, but I remember I asked him for help with math when I was in like 5th or 6th grade, and he stared at the work blankly for like ten minutes and passed it off to my mom, who hired a tutor to teach me. My mom, on the other hand, didn’t really have parents who pushed her to be academically inclined, so she got a BA and basically got married to my biological father afterwards. I think that she’s very intelligent in practical ways; when we came to the US after she divorced my father, she taught herself English and figured out a bunch of stuff about the system here and whatnot.</p>