My way is right, your way is wrong!

I was over reading a fascinating post about a new Nikola Tesla discovery: https://steemit.com/tesla/@ultramari0/long-lost-nikola-tesla-drawings-reveal-map-to-multiplication

This made me think of my youngest son.

At the age of 3 and 4 he was doing 6 and 7 digit addition and subtraction in his head on our road trips. We would play games with him. By Kindergarten he was also able to do division and multiplication in his head.

When he reached the age where they really start doing those things it turns out his method of solving division was NOT the way I was taught, and was not the way that the new NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND curriculum wanted it done. They forced this new method upon him. It didn't matter to the instructor, or the government that his solutions were correct. They couldn't quite understand how he was doing it. Neither could I. His answers were correct. However, the curriculum required he show his work or the answer was wrong. So he was forced to do things there way. I noticed his skill in math declining. Then when they taught him estimation it got worse. After that his work was average. I guess NO CHILD WAS LEFT BEHIND they were just averaged.

This makes me think of a relevant thing for all of our topics. YOU are not necessarily RIGHT and I am not necessarily RIGHT. It is subjective and depends a lot on the information both of us have. Even IF you think I am wrong, and I think you are wrong it is completely possible BOTH of us are right.

It illustrates again to me the importance of remembering that we all think differently, and yet we often can still solve the same problems, and come to similar conclusions while walking a different path. I consider this a beautiful thing NOT to be squashed and I really wish they hadn't squashed it in my son and that they were not still squashing it in many other children.

CONFORMITY is not the goal, and it never should be. That direction leads to stagnation and lack of innovation.