We develop the child’s brain. Is math really that important?

Many firm­ly believe that our poten­tial depends on what we are giv­en from birth, and they cite famous peo­ple who are con­sid­ered genius­es as an exam­ple: Albert Ein­stein or Beethoven. But sci­en­tists now know that the learn­ing expe­ri­ences we build from birth over­shad­ow any innate brain traits (Wexler in Thomp­son, 2014) . Stu­dents who grew up in a stim­u­lat­ing envi­ron­ment can do any­thing! Fea­tures of the brain some­times from the very begin­ning give some peo­ple more favor­able con­di­tions, but only a few are giv­en by nature that which will pro­vide them with an advan­tage for life.

Sci­en­tists unan­i­mous­ly claim that the lack of abil­i­ty in math­e­mat­ics is noth­ing more than a myth. In fact, the brain can and should be devel­oped at least in school lessons. And if you start doing this before school, then the child will have a con­fi­dent advan­tage over their peers.

The fact that math class­es affect the devel­op­ment of the child is con­firmed by the research of sci­en­tists from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. The sci­en­tists reg­u­lar­ly scanned the brains of eight-year-olds for six years. In chil­dren who stud­ied math­e­mat­ics and, over time, began to demon­strate suc­cess in this area, the struc­tures of the brain were sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent. They had a more devel­oped intra­pari­etal sul­cus of the cor­tex, which helps peo­ple per­form com­par­a­tive analy­sis and work with num­bers, as well as the occip­i­tal and pre­frontal lobes, which are respon­si­ble for fore­cast­ing. The high­er the suc­cess in math­e­mat­ics, the stronger was the activ­i­ty in the hip­pocam­pus — the part of the brain respon­si­ble for the con­sol­i­da­tion of mem­o­ry, the tran­si­tion from short-term to long-term.

Experts say that math­e­mat­ics class­es teach to gen­er­al­ize, find pat­terns and build log­i­cal chains — and this is an extreme­ly impor­tant skill for the entire edu­ca­tion­al process and life in gen­er­al.

Anoth­er impor­tant skill is fore­cast­ing, that is, the abil­i­ty to cal­cu­late your steps and actions, to see sev­er­al steps ahead.

In addi­tion, math class­es teach you to think quick­ly, work simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with many con­cepts from dif­fer­ent areas at once, teach you to under­stand, rather than mem­o­rize the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion, and devel­op abstract think­ing.

And it all starts with an oral account, which today is a prob­lem not only for younger stu­dents, but often for adults as well. Mean­while, it is nec­es­sary to cal­cu­late in your mind not only in order to adjust the home bud­get. “Inside the account, there are com­plex log­i­cal oper­a­tions: tran­si­tions through a dozen, divi­sion, divi­sion into groups, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion. All this is large­ly con­nect­ed with human think­ing, ”says the head of the Depart­ment of Neu­ro- and Pathopsy­chol­o­gy of Moscow State Uni­ver­si­ty. M. V. Lomonosov, Doc­tor of Psy­chol­o­gy, Pro­fes­sor Alexan­der Tkhos­tov.

And by the way, the study of log­ic affects the same areas of the brain as math­e­mat­ics. There­fore, choose smart games for chil­dren that will pos­i­tive­ly influ­ence the devel­op­ment of the men­tal abil­i­ties of preschool­ers. And in the selec­tion below, we showed excel­lent math games and games for the devel­op­ment of log­ic in chil­dren! Watch edu­ca­tion­al games Mama Znay­ki on WB!