The title is in honour of a British friend, who pointed out that as teaching philosophy is developed, these newfangled math teachers are more concerned with students understanding
why something is true than
that something is true. Which I think is what the 8
th grade math teacher was going for. Every student in that room understood why
x+3=6 can become x=6-3
Students in the lower level math class sometimes still write it out
x+3+(-3)=6+(-3)
to understand the process. Interestingly, I intuited that my method worked, but as soon as an 8th grader hollered out a different answer, I started second-guessing myself and had to logic through the why of my method.
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