A long article published in Tuổi Trẻ Cuối Tuần. Thank you all for your patience in reading. A 100% true story)
1. THE FEAR OF MATH & THE TROPHY IN THE PI-DIGIT RECITING CONTEST
My niece used to be very afraid of math. It was an obsession for her. She always felt stressed and anxious before every math exam. Living amid prejudices that girls cannot be good at natural science subjects made her even less confident. Besides, she was often spacey and seemed unable to pay attention in class. She concluded on her own: I cannot become a good math student because I have no talent and cannot even focus.
That obsession followed her for a long time until an event happened that changed her life.
She enrolled in an international school in Ho Chi Minh City. Her math teacher was an Indian man. Seeing that she struggled and seemed afraid of math, he initiated a conversation. She complained: I study math all the time but understand nothing, my grades are poor, so I don’t want to study this subject at all. I also lack the ability to concentrate, so I think I won’t be able to learn it.
The teacher thought for a few days. Then in front of the whole class, he announced he would organize a very strange competition: Whoever could memorize the longest sequence of Pi digits would be the winner. There were several rounds: round 1 held within groups; round 2 held within the whole class; and round 3 with the entire grade level. He encouraged and urged my niece to participate. The teacher told the students: In this competition, you don’t need to be smart or brilliant; to win, you just need to memorize a sequence of Pi as long as possible. And he taught them memorization techniques.
My niece, who had never won any academic contest, thought she had nothing to lose and that it sounded fun, so she joined. She diligently practiced memorizing the sequences of numbers and easily won round 1: The group-level competition.
Moving on to round 2: competing against the whole class. Her parents found it amusing but said nothing because for the first time, they saw her practicing something so passionately. All day long she mumbled, split number blocks, and made her parents check whether she recited them correctly. By round two, she could remember nearly 100 digits after Pi and became the winner in her class.
By round three, only 3 kids remained: her and two foreign friends. The contest became more intense. The teacher organized a public competition, sent notices to parents, and prepared rewards – very beautiful small crystal trophies. She loved the trophy so much that she came home and told her parents: I must win this no matter what.
Her father was delighted and spent weekday evenings practicing with her. And she spent another week mumbling all day long and writing on the board with her dad. On the day of the competition, she remembered the Pi sequence up to hundreds of digits and became the winner. She brought the winning trophy home full of pride: See that, I won!
After that competition, the teacher called her over and said: “Hey Ha, congratulations on winning! But do you know what is more important? If you could remember a Pi sequence with hundreds of numbers, you are certainly not someone without the ability to concentrate. Only someone who excels at focusing can remember such a long sequence of Pi.”
My niece had an epiphany and said: “Oh right, I can focus! Yet all this time I never thought of this.”
The Indian teacher continued: “I know you are afraid of math and think you cannot learn it. Now I am giving you a test paper to solve. Whichever question you don’t understand, ask me. When you understand, complete that test fully and submit it to me.” She went back home, buried her head in studying, and solved the test. Then she submitted it to him.
The first time, she got just over 50%. Her face was sad and gloomy. She complained to the teacher: “I told you, I am not good at math.” The teacher smiled, handed her another test paper, and said: “Go home and keep working on this test.” She asked: “Then how will you count my previous grade?” The teacher replied: “I will let you take tests until you achieve over 90%, and only then will I start recording your grade.”
And just like that, she brought math tests home to solve over ten times. Each time, the score went up a little bit, a little bit. Until one day, she could solve all the exam questions and got 97/100. She excitedly asked the teacher: “Can we count the official grade now, teacher?”. The teacher handed her an official exam paper for her to complete. She scored almost a perfect mark, and only then did the teacher record her official grade.
When it came to the Cambridge IGCSE exam (the general education examination under the British education system) for math, my niece was one of the highest scorers in Vietnam that year and received a letter of commendation from the exam board. From then on, she was no longer afraid of math and never complained about being unable to focus. She consistently achieved high marks in her subjects. She knew that if she didn’t succeed on the first attempt, there would be a second time, a third time, and she would get it done, as long as there was an opportunity.
During the university application season this year, she received scholarship offers from many American universities. She chose to study neural science and mathematics at a top liberal arts university in the US – fields of study that no one in the family ever thought she would dare to pursue in the future.
Meeting and studying with that Indian teacher contributed significantly to changing my niece’s life.
2. HAVE FAITH IN STUDENTS
There are so many things about education I learned through this story and relate to the current teaching and organizing of student assessment exams via online/in-person formats today.
There are many ways to motivate and encourage students, and those ways do not need to be overly complex or consume many resources. My niece’s teacher found an inexpensive solution to encourage and prove to her that she was not unfocused at all; she just lacked confidence.
When looking at online/in-person learning and testing today, I wonder about the logic behind why, after nearly 2 years of online learning, the education sector still forces primary and middle school students to take exams, requires students to come to school for in-person testing, or even places monitoring cameras to strictly watch students taking exams at home while still constantly fearing they will cheat.
Could it be that we are not creative enough to think of ways to let students take online exams while still evaluating them effectively? There are many ways to test students’ learning capacity. For example, for 1st-2nd graders, just an online interview session of about 15 minutes with some simple questions, such as: “Tell the teacher what you have learned! Write it for the teacher to see! What do you like the most?”… Such open questions and checks are completely sufficient to evaluate primary school students. It doesn’t always take elaborate and complex testing to evaluate a student’s capability.
For students in middle school and above, it is not much more complex either. There is no reason not to let students at this level take multiple broken-down mini-tests, evaluated through projects, group study, or direct interviews.
One of the first qualities that needs to be taught to students (and taught to human beings) is teaching honesty and trust. How can we teach our children to be honest and become good citizens if from the very beginning we have no faith in them? Do education and examinations have to start with suspicion?
And if in life we always hope to have “a second chance,” then why do we evaluate a student’s capability through just a few exam instances? The purpose of education is to give people real knowledge, even if that knowledge requires practicing many times to achieve.
So why do we decide a student’s academic life and learning capability through only a few evaluations? What is the problem with evaluating multiple times, with breaking it down into many stages? Why begrudge students a few experiences and a few opportunities?
If I were the decision-maker, I would be ready to let students take tests multiple times and would design test papers so that they could pass through practice.
After more than 02 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think that the mere fact that primary and early middle school students managed to get through the past 2 long years of online learning makes them all deserve to move up a grade and receive above-average scores.
Their resilience and determination over the past 02 years are truly far greater than many of us adults. How many of us made it through the past 02 years while still keeping our minds clear?
PS: Thanks to Tuổi Trẻ Cuối Tuần newspaper for publishing the article and journalist Phan Thi Cam for her feedback.
Article published in Tuổi Trẻ newspaper.
