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Are little children able to carry out mathematical calculations right away?
And if so, how is this possible? The question we should actually be asking ourselves is not how it is possible that little children are able to do mathematical calculations instantaneously but rather how is it possible that we adults, who are able to speak a language, are not able to carry out instantaneous mathematical calculations? The problem is that in mathematics we have confused the symbol 5 with the data. When the problems comes from knowing the magnitude of five then there is not any problem, given that an adult is capable of correctly perceiving the symbol or data from the value of one to the value of approximately twelve with a certain grade of credibility from twelve to twenty approximately until the most wise adult has a tendency of losing credibility notably. Starting from the number twenty, adults calculate in bulk and we almost always calculate very b
adly. Children already know the symbols such as 8, 9, 10, 15 etc but they do not know the data yet are not capable of carrying out instantaneous mathematical calculations. But small children are able to see things exactly the way they are, whereas us adults, tend to see things the way we believe they are or how we think they should be. It seems crazy that even though there are people that are able to understand how little children that are capable of doing instantaneous mathematical calculations, that we ourselves are not capable of doing the same. If a person is not able to do instantaneous mathematical calculations, it is due to the fact that if someone says number “89” for example, all we can actually see is the number in our head and we are not capable of seeing it in 79 separate dots. Obviously is someone showed us a card with seventy nine dots on it we would be able to see it but we would probably not be capable of perceiving it. Little children are capable nonetheless. For little children to be able to perceive the truth of number 1, they are concretely able to see one dot. Therefore, it is only precise that we teach the child that data and tell them that “This is called number 1”, then we would present them with number 2 (which is two dots) and we say “This is called 2”. Then we say “This is number 3” while showing the child and so forth. All we have to do is present each one of these data a very small number of times for that the child to be capable of perceiving and where is he able to retain the truth. When the mind of an adult is presented with this reality, it tends to become astounded with it, and many adults prefer to believe that a child is capable of recognizing the values of 1 to 79 and so forth and think that the child is somewhat of a fortune teller, before accepting that a child of two is capable of doing a job that to us seems to have and intellectual character and that we the adults, are not capable of achieving.
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