“Everyone, clear your desks. When I say go, flip your papers over and start!”
In early elementary school, math drills used to be the focal point of many math class lessons.
Teachers would place papers upside down on the desk, and as soon as they said the word ‘go’, papers were flipped over and students rushed to solve as many math facts as possible in a minute.
There’s no denying the importance of fact fluency, as computational skills are tied to logical reasoning and critical thinking problems. But a curriculum or math learning program that only focuses on rote memorization is limiting for students when it comes to higher levels of questioning and thinking skills.
Think of Albert Einstein.
If his educational focus was solely on math drills, do you think he would have developed the theory of relativity? Do you think he would have taken steps to think creatively and challenge what existed or was known?
For students to become the next great world thinkers and creators, there are a few notes they should take from Einstein.
To be like Einstein, you need to think creatively and openly
Math drills are a list of math facts that are given to students so that they can work on speed and accuracy when solving. Students are often given a time limit so that they can see how many they can solve within that period.
In early elementary school, computational skills are important as students develop fact fluency. Math learning centers, like Kumon®, also focus heavily and mainly on computational fluency.
But only focusing on this style of learning is rigid and dated, and school curricula now introduce analytical, logical reasoning, and critical thinking questions in first grade.
And Einstein wasn’t a fan of focusing on these types of problems or math drills either. As Walter Isaacson says in a biography, “He found the style of teaching—rote drills, impatience with questioning—to be repugnant.”
