“Timed” Math Tests Destroy Kids’ Love Of Math
They cause stress, wreck working memory, and don’t even measure math ability very well
When I was in grade 2 our teacher sent us home with a sheet of math questions.
It quickly turned into a nightmare for me.
The instructions were to do the questions in five minutes. My parents duly set up a timer for me, and I started working on the sheet of problems.
I was a nerdy little kid who liked math, normally. (I’ve grown up into an adult that loves math and does it for pleasure.) But back in grade 2, knowing that the timer was ticking, I suddenly found myself frozen. I looked at the figures and nothing computed. It was math that I normally could easily calculate, but suddenly, nothing would cohere in my brain.
It felt terrible. After a couple of minutes, I’d barely answered a question or two, and I was realizing I’ll never get this done in time.
And realizing that made me even more nervous. Pretty soon I couldn’t focus at all, on anything. By the time the timer went off, I was weeping miserably.
I felt like an absolute failure. The sense of shame was hot and terrible; it was burned into my memory so deeply I can still summon it today!
