The Challenge

There's a challenge to taking on new students. You have to dig deep, work on the puzzle for a few weeks, and then try to find the way to lead them through the barrier that's keeping them in the dark. Most of the time, you make it through, but it's still difficult enough to be a challenge. How do you get on the inside, to see what's blocking the way?

Sometimes, it's obvious. There's a misunderstanding that can just be put right, and then they roar away and you help them catch up. On other occasions, it can take hours and hours to reach the problem, and only then if they allow you to get there. Deeper problems come with a defensiveness that can defy many attempts to help. Everyone has a deep-seated tendency to say 'I can't do it.' when they find something difficult, after all. Everyone can do arithmetic, though. It's a minimum level reachable by all, if the student hasn't been undermined at some crucial stage.

Why do people say, 'I can't do it.', so easily. Is it all down to the inherent laziness of the brain? It's fairly well known that the brain is fundamentally conservative (small 'c') and that it discourages the formation of new patterns of grooves in its structure. A therapist told me that on a passing occasion, so I choose to believe that it's true. That's why people are so prone to not learning new things as they get older. It's not just that it's harder, which it of course it, but that biology itself resists. This is a reason why pessimism is hard-wired into the human psyche in many ways.

So, if you have one student who is convinced that arithmetic is hard and that they can't do numbers, then you really have to start to find leverage and work not on the arithmetic so much as the mental block. That's the hard part. That's the challenge beyond the challenge, and it's where a slip up can make things so much worse than better. Oh, for an easy life!

O.