shytheearnestdryad

I think so too. The two are completely different things

Disclaimer - comment is speculation and only based on my experience and those I know.

I suspect one of the biggest issues with the current educational guidelines is that they don’t give any room for different students having different needs. As a child, I struggled with times table’s because the speed at which we were expected to provide the answer and the lack of information provided about why we should memorize them. My brain doesn’t work that quickly. I understood multiplication just fine, but those “mad minute math” sheets I couldn’t complete in a minute. No way. That said, I excelled in higher level math classes. I went to a college with the unofficial motto “That’s all well and good in practice, but how does it work in theory?” One of the most prestigious colleges in the US. I have a PhD and use complicated statistical modeling every single day in my work. But I use a calculator when doing arithmetic because it’s just much less error prone and faster. Of course I can do it by hand, I’m just not fast at it.

Anyway. I think that it’s true that some kids won’t care about learning why and will struggle with that approach, and other kids like me who lost interest without any explanation of why any of this was important or how it worked. I think I would have had an easier time getting my brain to buckle down and memorize things of I had a better explanation of why I should do so. Not everyone is the same.

I'm Scandinavian and think it's a nice name. Though not too common in the US. Maybe Signy would be better, though it's very similar. Doesn't sound remotely similar to cigarette!

Totally agree

Me too, though I don’t agree with everything she says either. I do think Rachel Reed does a good job of uncovering where various practices even came from, and it’s often shocking.