[hitekker]

After reading this article, reading the comments here and then reading the author's follow-up to a direct message:

  Comment:
  This approach seems a great way to discourage smart young kids.Do we expect geometry students to grasp integrals? Want to convert kids to be math people? Laud the child for grasping the connection between multiplication and addition, use it as an opportunity to introduce the commutive property, and work on equivalence down the line….

  Brett Berry's Answer:
  I agree! Great opportunity for learning!!

... I would say that this author has no idea what's he talking about. Saying "I agree" to a refutation of your article is dangerously close to agreeing that your article is more rhetoric than substance. Especially when considering the self-righteous tone, this article seems little more than your garden-variety mental gymnastics: dressed up in pretty rhetoric which barely obscures the lesions of condescension, defensiveness, and disdain for others.

Flagged.

[signal11]

I think the meta-lesson for the child is that there'll always be people like the teacher who marked "5+5+5" wrong and this guy who defends it with bullshit reasoning, and part of learning to deal with the world involves learning that sometimes one can be absolutely right and still be penalised/marked wrong/disagreed with, and you have to deal with that, sometimes by just answering the way they expect you to answer.

It's a pretty rough lesson to learn during a math test, though. :-\