Learning in the holidays

Tonight The Kid was learning to make graphs of equations. Her interest had been caught by a graph she saw on a TV programme last week. She mentioned that on her trial day the teacher had been assessing her maths. She thought it silly to have been assessed nearly two months before she started school. "If the teacher sees that I can do something, then yes, that's useful for her to know," she said. "But if she sees that I CAN'T do something, that tells her absolutely NOTHING. Why bother? That's a total waste of time. They should test me in the autumn." I didn't quite follow.

"Two months," she said. "Anything can happen in two months. Since that day I went to school, I've finished learning the times tables. I understand about areas. I can make graphs of equations. I can add decimals - I used to only understand the ones that looked like money. I still don't understand infinity but at least I know I was wrong before - it isn't just a really big thing. I know how to multiply with negative numbers. I can calculate lots of things much better in my head." Now I could see where this was leading. We'd done more maths in the last two months than in the previous two years. Learning is often like that.

"So," she said, "What if the teacher had tested me on all that stuff in July? I wouldn't have known it. That doesn't mean I won't know it in September."

I tried to explain that when you go to school, people think you do all your learning there. It would make sense for a teacher to think that a child wouldn't learn in the holidays. And it is sort of true: if children are made to do maths when they don't want to, sometimes it puts them off. It can put them off so much that even when they have a bit of time and freedom in the school holidays, they still think maths is boring. Most schoolchildren don't choose to do maths in the holidays.

She looked down at her graph, y = x². She'd been very excited a minute earlier when she noticed the symmetry and had a feeling for why it must be symmetrical. "That won't happen to me, will it?" she asked in a small voice.