WHAT DETERMINES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MASTERY AND MEMORY?
Think back to your days in high school and your algebra classes. Do you recall having your math teacher hand out a review sheet a few days before the big test? So what did you do with this review sheet? Right! You memorized it knowing that most of the questions would appear on the test in some form or other. We are the only industrialized nation in the world that I know of where parents proudly announce “Oh, I was never very good at math.” Not hard to explain considering you probably memorized the material for a passing test grade, and then after the test was over, quickly forgot the material. On the front of this website I have inscribed in red:
“When you are dissatisfied, and
Yearn to return to your youth
Think of Algebra!”
I still see students in the local public school receiving a passing math grade using the “review sheet” technique, even though their test grades never get above a sixty. How can this happen? Easy! The student’s grades are based upon a grading system that ensures success even though the student cannot pass a single test (unless you consider a sixty a passing grade). Many students’ overall average grades are computed based upon fifty percent of their grade coming from the homework (easily copied by them) and another fifty percent determined from their test scores (following the review sheet). So the student who receives hundreds on the daily homework grades and fifties or sixties on the tests is cruising along with an overall grade average of a high “C” or a low “B.” Yet, that student cannot explain half of the material in the book.
I have often explained to parents of students who were struggling in my math classes that their struggle was akin to the honey bee struggling its way through the wax seal of the comb. It is that struggle that strengthens the bee’s wings and enables it to immediately fly upon its exit from the hive. Cut the wax away for the young bee and it will die because its wings are too weak to allow it to fly. Yes, there is a difference between struggling and frustration! The home educator as well as the classroom teacher must be ever vigilant to recognize the difference.
While we all would like the student to master the new concept on the day it is introduced, that does not always happen. Not every math student completely understands every math concept on the day it is introduced. It is because of this that John Saxon developed his incremental approach to mathematics. When John’s incremental development is coupled with a constant review of these concepts, “mastery” occurs.
Mastery occurs through a process referred to by Dr. Benjamin Bloom as “automaticity.” The term was coined by Dr. Bloom, of “Bloom’s Taxonomy,” while at the University of Chicago in the mid 1950’s. He described this phenomenon as the ability of the human mind to accomplish two things simultaneously so long as one of them was over-learned (or mastered). The two critical components for mastery are repetition over time.
Automaticity is another way to describe the placing of information or data into long term memory. The process requires that its two components—repetition over time—be used simultaneously. It is this process in John Saxon’s math books that creates the proper atmosphere for mastery of the math concepts. Violating either one of the two components negates the process. In other words, you cannot speed up the process by taking two lessons a day or doing just the odd or even numbered problems in each lesson.
Trying to take shortcuts with mathematics would be like trying to save meal preparation time every day. Why not just eat all the meals on weekends and save the valuable time spent preparing meals Monday through Friday. Just as your body will not permit this “short-cut,” your mind will not allow mastery of material squeezed into a short time frame for the sake of speeding up the process by reducing the amount of time spent on the individual math concepts.
In a single school year of nine months, the student using John Saxon’s math books will have taken more than twenty-five weekly tests. Since all the tests are cumulative in content, passing these tests with a minimum grade of “80” reflects “mastery” of the required concepts – not just memory!
While a student may periodically struggle with an individual test or two throughout the entire range of the tests, it is not their test “average” that tells how prepared they are for the next level math course, nor is it the individual test scores (good or bad) they received on the early tests that matter. What is important are the individual test scores the student receives on the last five tests in the course. It is these last five test scores that reflect whether or not the student is ready for the next level math course.
Students who receive individual test scores of 80 or higher—first time tested—on their last five tests in any of John Saxon’s math books are well prepared for success in the next level math course. I strongly recommend that you not tell the students of this until they reach the fifth test of the last five tests. Believe me, even the best of students will never really apply themselves to the first 25 or so tests thinking that they do not really count. By the time they reach the last five tests – if they even do – it will be too late as mastery has not taken hold. They will be lucky to even reach test 25 having not really applied themselves on the first 10 or so tests.