Dear Parents, Students and Teachers,
In my monthly, five-minute STEM Skill Step Up Letter, I give hints like the following on improving critical cognitive and technical skills for young adults. I will also respond to questions that you submit. To do so, subscribe to the newsletter by emailing me. I will respond to questions on the Play-Ed Corporation Facebook page when appropriate.
Rote-Learning Renaissance
As an undergraduate at a
competitive business school, I had to take two semesters of accounting. Fond of
math, I presumed not only that I would enjoy this computation-intensive
subject, but also that I would ace the class. I was wrong on both counts. I did
not enjoy accounting because I had to memorize many rules. Though I could understand why many
of these rules and conventions existed, I could not logically deduce them as
with math. Loathe to memorize lists of rules, I felt frustrated, as if I were wasting valuable time that could be better
spent studying other subjects.
I did not do well in accounting due to lack of
practice. If I understood the problem examples and explanations in the text
book, I did not bother to solve the practice or review problems. Had I, I would have
realized that understanding an example problem and being able to solve
it myself are not the same. We can understand how something is
done without being able to do it ourselves. Conversely, we can do some things without understanding why or how they work. For example, we all correctly pluralize English words even though most of
us do not understand the grammar rules governing when to add the suffix -s (as in books) rather than –es (as
is boxes).
To give an example of the former phenomenon, I wanted to surprise my
brother, who likes apple pie, by making an apple strudel for him. To learn how,
I watched a YouTube video of a Bavarian pastry chef. Listening to his
step-by-step explanation as I observed his demonstration, I completely
understood how to make a strudel after viewing the video. However, I was unable
to make one myself initially. The first time I tried, I struggled to stretch
the dough. Finally doing so, I spread the apples on it, but when I tried to
roll it, the dough stuck to everything. I had to practice about five times
before I could make a strudel that resembled the Bavarian pastry chef’s
masterpiece. Since that time, I have further improved with practice, learning
to make more difficult strudels like chocolate custard-filled ones.
Another example of being able to do without understanding is
plugging numbers into a formula to compute a result without understanding where
the formula comes from, why it works, or how it works. I was a repeat offender of this academic sin when I studied physics, a
subject where our observation-based intuitions about the world are often wrong.
For this reason, I often did not understand what the answers I derived meant
even though I scored well on tests. Ironically, my teacher had the opposite
problem. Understanding the principles of physics well, he could effortlessly structure
equations to model word and real-life problems. However, inadequately practiced
in solving equations, he often made mistakes, and he sometimes was not sure if
his derivations were correct when the answer key expressed the formula differently. He often asked me and other students to confirm that the two were the
same.
The value of understanding and practicing, that is, rote learning, is manifest in
the success of some of my fellow accounting students. A few of the ones who
received perfect or near perfect scores often completed two-hour exams in 45
minutes because they did not even have to use a calculator.
Though rote learning, still emphasized in Asia, is not
adequate in and of itself, as my accounting classmates’ performance reveal, it
does play an important role in overall learning, especially in STEM subjects.
Parents ought to make sure their elementary-age children daily practice basic
math operations without a calculator and can comfortably handle conceptually
challenging topics like fractions and percentages. By so doing so, parents will position
their children for success in middle and high school STEM subjects.
Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA
Founder and CEO, Play-Ed Corporation
Author Profile
Dr. Gabriella is an accomplished scholar and businessman. Ivy-league educated, he has served as a lecturer or professor at universities in the U.S., Japan, and China. Currently, he resides in Japan, where he is a senior manager and active consultant. A former high-school math teacher, Joseph is passionate about teaching critical STEM skills to future generations through his company, Play-Ed Corporation.
Dr. Gabriella is an accomplished scholar and businessman. Ivy-league educated, he has served as a lecturer or professor at universities in the U.S., Japan, and China. Currently, he resides in Japan, where he is a senior manager and active consultant. A former high-school math teacher, Joseph is passionate about teaching critical STEM skills to future generations through his company, Play-Ed Corporation.
STEM Lessons
Each week, I will provide one STEM challenge problem for students to solve. Then, through a virtual lesson, I will review key concepts from the problem, respond to questions, and teach students various learning strategies, problem-solving methods, and types of thinking. I will also furnish opportunities for participants to learn from one another. Finally, I will collect feedback from students for use in improving the lessons, making them more fun and didactic.The purpose of this extra-curricular training is to guide students in the application of STEM subjects to real-world problem, thereby preparing them for future careers.
Uncle Joe's Tutoring
For a nominal fee, I will set up four, 30-minute online sessions with students to tutor middle-school and high-school math, science and English each month. Students will participate in sessions with up to four others depending on scheduling. While I plan to tutor as frequently as possible, I also use tutors I have trained, usually career teachers or university instructors. Students will have access to discussion forums where they can pose questions to other students and to me. To maximize learning, I strongly encourage students in the same class to register together.Contact Dr. Joseph Gabriella at jgabriella.played@gmail.com to register.
© 2017 Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA. All rights reserved.
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