Alexandra Bella
#74823097
#74823097
Response to Benny’s Rules article
While reading this article, I was absolutely fascinated by his rules. He’s consistent in what he does, he initially seems to understand place value when working with numbers, and yet each number can exist as its own entity. I like that although most of his work isn’t correct, he still seems excited to show the rules that he is using. If this article was written in 1973, I can’t imagine the number of times he was probably singled out for being incorrect, perhaps even ridiculed. Many of these mistakes remind me of mistakes I constantly see when reviewing assignments, etc, for students I tutor, for instance:
2/3 + 4/5 = 8/15
This seems like a serious case of over-use of instrumental learning led
to Benny’s operations in his math work. I wonder if technology today could help
remedy that. After all, not having correctly explained concepts would lead to a
misuse of instruments to demonstrate those concepts. Therefore, if Benny had
more support so as to be able to re-see the operations being done(say, in an
online video, etc.) and the explanations behind them, I wonder if he would have
been able to recall better how to work with the math as well as the explanation
behind the work he was doing. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would have to
be to work with a student who had made up so many different rules. Is it
ethical to make him un-learn them? Also, it seems absurd to me that he said he
could show (I think it was)
2 + 0.3 = 0.5
using a visual aid. I can’t imagine how he might’ve misused the visual
aids to do such a thing. Whatever happened to this student?
That's an interesting thought - is it ethical to make him unlearn the rules he's evolved to cope with TPI? On the other hand, is it ethical to have him stick with them when they are only going to thwart any possibility of him being successful in future math classes? I wonder, since he's recognized the problems with the answer key system, if that might be an "in" for working with what he has (an ability to spot patterns and a desire to develop explanations) to slowly iron out the problems with his rules.
ReplyDeleteAs for what happened to Benny, I don't know of any follow-up being published, and Erlwanger himself died in 2003. If I come across any information, I'll let you know.