It is important when teaching students number sense and number facts never to emphasize speed. In fact
this is true for all mathematics. There is a common and damaging misconception in mathematics – the
idea that strong math students are fast math students. I work with a lot of mathematicians and one thing Inotice about them is that they are not particularly fast with numbers, in fact some of them are rather slow.
This is not a bad thing, they are slow because they think deeply and carefully about mathematics. Laurent
Schwartz, a top mathematician, wrote an autobiography about his school days and how he was made to feel
“stupid” because he was one of the slowest math thinkers in his class (Schwartz, 2001). It took him many
years of feeling inadequate to come to the conclusion that: ‘rapidity doesn’t have a precise relation to intelligence.
What is important is to deeply understand things and their relations to each other. This is where
intelligence lies. The fact of being quick or slow isn’t really relevant.’ (Schwartz, 2001) Sadly speed and test
driven math classrooms lead many students who are slow and deep thinkers, like Schwartz, to believe that
they cannot be good at math.