I love my math and science classes this semester. I feel challenged and find the material fascinating. Of course, I get frustrated sometimes, but there is something entirely affirming about understanding a concept after fighting through it. Given that, I often wonder why it took me so long to appreciate the subjects. I think I finally figured it out. Growing up in a conservative Christian school, scientific concepts were often paired with biblical lessons. Either the textbook proclaimed the wonder of God or taught us to mistrust mainstream science. No wonder it wasn’t interesting. There was no wonder, no fascination. God did everything. That teaches wonder in God, not wonder in science. Anything that doesn’t line up with the idea of God is to be mistrusted. It’s pretty hard to develop a sense of wonder in something that is only to be trusted if it matches what the Bible says. I can remember proclaiming once, right before we watched a science video put out by Moody Bible Institute (one that I had seen multiple times in church), “Science is boring!” My teacher lit into me, telling me how interesting it was. And she was right: science is interesting. But I think I was right, too: ignoring everything in science that isn’t backed up in Sunday school or using science as a vehicle to teach the Bible isn’t interesting. A heavy reliance on creationism is going to lower performance in science and math, because so often their most basic scientific concepts and algebra are wrong. My foundation for science was eroded, so that later when my interest did begin to pique, I didn’t think I was any good at it. And really, I am not particularly good, but I am not terrible at it as I once assumed. What I am now is utterly fascinated. Taking off the biblical lens, the world is entirely new. I have such a weak foundation, that everything I learn is new. I don’t mind being frustrated occasionally, or even most of the time. When I finally understand it, I get such a satisfaction that it begins the love affair anew. I often feel like a small child, completely enthralled with what most people consider minute and boring because they’ve had it so many times.

Math is another story. I didn’t always hate math. The first time I remember hating math was the first day of the second or third grade (I had the same teacher for both). Since we were a small class even by the standards of our small, private school, we were in the same classroom as the grade below us. My teacher gave my grade some math worksheets while she worked with the other grade. When I checked my answer with the teacher key, it wasn’t right. Despite how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it to work. Finally, I asked the teacher for help. She took one look at my paper and said, “Oh, you forgot to borrow!” The entire grade she was working with burst out laughing. I don’t really know why, because borrowing is something we had learned at the end of the year before, so they wouldn’t have even known what it was. But it was my first remembered embarrassing moment, made worse by the hot tears that streamed down my cheeks. Many years later, I took pre-algebra during the three weeks I homeschooled in the seventh grade. When I returned to my private school, the eighth grade was taking pre-algebra while the seventh grade was taking something else. So I just joined the eighth grade math class. I really liked it. The second semester, though, nobody had felt challenged so the teacher moved everyone up a level. I had the choice of staying with my class in pre-algebra, repeating everything I had already learned, or moving on to Algebra I with the eighth graders. I chose Algebra I, and we crammed an entire year’s worth of algebra into one semester. That was hard. In the eighth grade, I switched to public school. It was a middle school, and they only offered up to Algebra I, so I had to repeat it. Their methods were different, though, and I found myself bored and often with lower grades because I solved the problems the way I had learned the year before. Doing anything different confused me. At the end of the year, my teacher told me I wasn’t ready to move on to geometry and that I would have to take Algebra I again. Unhappily, I found myself bored in algebra again the next year. That year, we moved in the middle of the semester, and the algebra book they used utilized the same methods I had used in seventh grade. At the end of the year, my teacher told me that I really should have been in another class. I had a 98% and a solid knowledge of basic algebra, but I had lost any desire to learn math.

I am glad I gave math and science another chance. I am woefully behind those my age, and even somewhat behind the entering freshmen because I stayed away from the harder courses in high school and my first college. But I ignore that, and I love it.

Tags: creationsim, math, science

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Life Today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.