Teens - Where or Where Has Your Persistence Gone?

By Shirley Slick
A characteristic that very young children seem to have in abundance but seems to completely disappear by the time students reach 1st year Algebra is persistence. What happens to it? Can it be found again?

One need only watch a baby learning to crawl or pull themselves up to standing or begin walking to see extreme persistence at work. Babies never give up, even when they hurt themselves. Once they have mastered walking, the focus gets switched to language development. They show the same persistence with learning to speak and beginning to learn language. Children are reinforced by entire family units as they learn language related skills. Children enter school excited to learn--to begin to read and write. And they never doubt that they have the ability to learn because we as a society have taught them to believe that they can learn to read and write.

Something strange apparently happens between those preschool years and the high school years because Algebra students are quite literally lacking any persistence. It is not at all uncommon for high school students try a math problem once and if unsuccessful to simply give up. And this happens over and over and with student after student.

But this just didn't make sense that a quality that existed in such abundance should disappear. So what is at work here? I believe that the key to what is happening can be identified in the 2nd paragraph. Notice that after walking is mastered, the efforts switch to language skills. There is no mention of or attention given to mathematics.

In reality, because of misinformation from Piaget, it has been thought that abstract thinking needed for mathematics should wait until age 11. Consequently, parents have never been encouraged to work with their pre-school children with math. This means the persistence which became a natural part of language skills was never instilled into mathematics. We have only recently learned that children are actually capable of learning basic math skills and logic during ages 1 to 4. This information, however, is very new and is just beginning to be given to parents of preschoolers.

So, for all teenagers who seem to lack persistence with Algebra, you can take some solace in the fact that your preschool years didn't have you as prepared for math as for language. However, that is no excuse to fail. You can develop persistence now. Persistence is the ability to maintain action regardless of your feeling. You press on even when you feel like quitting. You are persistent is other areas--maybe learning to skateboard, or play an instrument. You just need to apply persistence to Algebra as well. You can be successful!

Shirley Slick, "The Slick Tips Lady," is a retired high school math teacher and tutor with degrees in Mathematics and Psychology and additional training in brain-based learning/teaching. Her goals: (1) to help parents help their children with math, (2) to help eliminate the horrendous Algebra failure rate, and (3) to inform the general public about problematic issues related to the field of education. For your free copy of "10 Slick Tips for