Geometry vs. Geometry

Geom­e­try is not my favorite sub­ject. With the excep­tion of proofs, I con­fess to find­ing Geom­e­try rather bor­ing. It seems to be com­mon for peo­ple to pre­fer either Geom­e­try or Alge­bra, but I’m begin­ning to chal­lenge this per­cep­tion. Let us rea­son together: 

1. Stu­dents in Math Mas­ters are encour­aged to learn dif­fi­cult and beau­ti­ful truths using tra­di­tion­al math texts. The texts serve as some instruc­tion, but most­ly as a source for prac­tic­ing the skill of the con­tent. I have yet to find a math pro­gram that can rival the Art of Prob­lem Solv­ing, but still uti­lize and enjoy Jacobs and Foer­sters texts. Cur­ricu­lum speak aside, Jacobs walks stu­dents through a process, while AOPS chal­lenges stu­dents to observe and think. Both skills are necessary. 
2. Regard­ing Geom­e­try, I’ve always shift­ed all stu­dents, even my AOPS stu­dents into the Jacobs Geom­e­try text. The mate­r­i­al is proven and approach­able for all stu­dents. Stu­dents who strug­gle with math find this geom­e­try approach­able, fun even. This harkens back to the per­cep­tion we are chal­leng­ing. Stu­dents who rel­ish the chal­lenge and have thor­ough­ly enjoyed Alge­bra, often find Jacobs Geom­e­try bor­ing. Not dif­fi­cult. Bor­ing. I hon­est­ly thought that Geom­e­try’s sim­plic­i­ty caused some stu­dents to be bored. Yet…
3. My cur­rent sub­ject, who is also my most math strong child (con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, lov­ing math is not a genet­ic trait) , start­ed Geom­e­try in Jan­u­ary. While I expect­ed him to be bored by Geom­e­try, he was­n’t mere­ly bored. He was actu­al­ly annoyed and angered at Jacobs for try­ing to walk him through each and every prob­lem. He would rather try and fail than have some­one spoon feed him the process. So we switched to AOPS Geom­e­try, He is no longer annoyed, and every­thing is right with the math world once again. 

Here’s my con­clu­sion from these three points: How Geom­e­try is pre­sent­ed to a stu­dent impacts how a stu­dent feels about Geometry. 

I already knew this to be true for Alge­bra, so it sur­pris­es me that it took me years to get here with Geom­e­try. If you’ll excuse me, I have an AOPS Geom­e­try text call­ing my name and I’m excit­ed to learn Geom­e­try again.