Getting Math in your Bones

If you’ve read much of Math Mojo, you’ll know I am an advocate for practicing basic skills until you know them “in your bones,” or “cold,” or “until you can do them in your sleep.”

While listening to to the story “The Writer Who Couldn’t Read” by Robert Krulwich  on the radio on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, I realized that they were talking about that very thing.

The story is about, how:

“In January of 2002,” writes the neuroscientist Oliver Sacks, “I received a letter from Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist describing a strange problem.”

Howard is an author of detective novels.

One morning he work up and got the morning paper, the Toronto Globe and Mail, an English-language journal — but he found that it was written in Serbo-Croatian or Korean, or some other language he didn’t recognize.

Now he has a problem. Howard has lost the ability to read.

Howard lost a part of his brain from a stroke in the night. He now suffers what is called word blindness.

He thought he was done as a writer. But what he discovered was something that I talk about often in Math Mojo – knowing something in your bones. It turns out that Howard can read what he writes with his own hand. His mind recognizes the words from his muscle memory, or “motor memory.”

I remember from my own childhood times when I couldn’t remember, say, 7 x 8, but if I traced the numbers in the air with my fingers, or even in my mind, I could come up with “56.” Now I understand that it was because I had written 7 x 8 so often, as I did written exercises, that it had gotten “into my bones” – into my motor memory.

I knew that I wasn’t learning the “tables” as well as some of the other kids in the class by doing “worksheets.” I also found them so boring and passive that it caused me to resent them. So on my own I just wrote the charts and tables myself, over and over.

Does this mean that I take back my constant complaining that we use too many charts and mind-deadening worksheets when we teach multiplication skills or other basic math skills? Not at all. Both of those things have most of the written material given to you, and you just either look at them, or simply write the answer.

You may write “56″ over and over again, but your muscle memory won’t necessarily associate that with 7 x 8. That’s what you have to write the problem and the answer over and over. Of course not everyone has to do this. Some people learn by staring at charts. But I’ll bet every single person would learn better if they used some “muscle.”

And I’m sure there is a very high percentage of the population that doesn’t learn well at all from staring at charts of seemingly random material. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use charts at all. Sometimes it’s nice to supplement real learning with stuff like that. But it should not be the main source. I think dependency on passive learning is a pathology of our modern society, and is a lot more counterproductive than most people realize.

If you Google multiplication you will find thousands upon thousands of “free worksheets.” There is a reason that they are less than a dime a dozen. It’s because they are worth less than a dime a dozen. Sometimes I believe they should pay you to use them.

Howard says, “I also started writing the words with my tongue on the roof of my mouth…” This is a good, creative way to practice. It also shows thought and creativity. Thinking like this about writing, math, or anything else gives more meaning to what you are doing. It creates more neural pathways (See the post about How Puzzles may Improve your Mind.

A great way to practice is with playing cards. You are active with them in both the visual and kinesthetic sense. I have had a lot of success teaching people who have otherwise had very limited success was learning math skills, by having them use playing cards. Not only is your brain more active when you use them, but they are more interesting to use as well. Face it, playing cards are fun. (Maybe that is why they don’t usually use them in schools.)

P.S. you can listen to the audio of Howard’s story for free here.

P.P.S. You can find dozens of videos of how to use playing cards to practice multiplication skills at in the “Numbers Juggling–Times without the Tables” “ course, at learn2multiply.com .