Mathematics according to the Hejny Method – a lecture report (February 2013)

Personal experience is the key

We have a first-grade pupil at home who started to show interest in numbers long before he began to attend school. Of course, sweets are his favourite subject for doing maths with, he never errs in that, and loves discussions such as “If I am five, I should get five sweets, not just three!” After that, he asked me to add two more, and one additional sweet for his little sister, as she is one year old. “So how many sweets should I give you?” I asked, hoping that he will get confused and forget about the original request. “Six!” my son fired away without any thinking. Who would think that this is actually a mathematical exercise 3+2+1=6, which he will only encounter sometime in November in the first year of school?

Our expectations from the first textbook of mathematics were high. At first, we quickly thumbed through it, and our son’s attention was caught by the very last page, where there were examples of adding and subtracting numbers up to 6, so-called snakes, were shown. We solved all of these, our son often more quickly than I, and put the textbook aside. However, the textbook was of course used at school for several months, and learning maths meant going through all problems from the textbook (although the problems were trivial and only up to 6), at best in colouring or painting the required number of pictures. After six months, they fought their way through to the number 10, but I started hearing comments such as “Those maths problems again...” I could not have disagreed – I was bored with the memorizing method myself, and I have only been double-checking the homework!

The Hejny method principle

According to Prof. Hejny, presenting children with facts and insisting on memorizing these is a much inferior way of teaching mathematics than building on the principle of experience and pleasure from resolving an interesting task. He believes that a problem solved by the child himself (or in discussion with other pupils, guided by the teacher) will be remembered much more easily than any information laid before him as a given fact by the teacher. Teachers often believe that children only know what they have been taught, but the method’s principle lies in the idea that children know especially what they have experienced themselves – such as knowing how many windows you have at home, although it has never been taught to you.

The method is based on introducing children into a familiar environment (similarly as if they had been invited to your home), and in that environment, they are presented with various problems (such as counting the number of windows). Experience from the environment is stored in the memory as schemes (you know how many doors you have, which way they open, where the furniture stands, etc. – in short, a lot of information you know, but you never actively memorized). Gradually, the pupil can “walk” through the environment and create, without any conscious efforts, permanent mathematical recognition. An example of the used environments is a bus. It runs stop to stop, people get on and off (at school, the bus is represented, e.g. by a box, and people by PET bottles), each stop is “managed” by a dispatcher, and of course, there is a driver on the bus. The teacher plays a game with the children, and by the time the bus reaches the end of the line, he asks “How many people are in the bus?” Most children do not know it the first time, but after a third run, no child gets it wrong. All of the children participate in the lesson, all of them can discuss and compare their opinions. The teacher does not explain anything, does not correct the children, just guides them through the discussion in which the children are searching for the best solution, experimenting, discovering – and having fun. The method teaches the children to think; the teacher does not present them with any pearls of wisdom, the children can find them themselves.

The method asks for a completely new approach from the teachers, which can be difficult for some of them – laying aside stereotypes might be hard. The best motivation for teachers is, however, posed by the enthusiasm of their pupils, which is obvious during the maths lessons.  It is true that some parents can be dissatisfied at the beginning – just as the teacher does not give away much information, the textbooks and tasks in the textbooks are usually presented with only a few words. The parents are then often confused by the task – they just see a mix of numbers and pictures in the textbook, where the only description is “Solve the problem”. This is, however, where the children’s role comes to help – the child should be able to explain the familiar environment in which the task is being solved. As the teacher does not give them his “pearls of wisdom”, neither should the parents. The principle of the method is discovering the world by themselves!

Results of the method

The Hejny method, combined with Fraus textbooks, is unfortunately only being used at a few schools presently. The class of the teacher Jitka Michnova learned maths using this method from the first year through to the fifth year. Maths is not a feared subject in her class, but quite on the contrary, one of the most popular ones. The success of this method can be proved by results of the children in various mathematics competitions, and in the Logical Olympiad (three pupils from this class fought their way through to the finals!). The children keep actively entering these contests, just because they like it. Another mathematics contest called The Kangaroo (the “Cricket” category) showed that even the weakest students do better than usual. Even the weakest pupil who was originally recommended to postpone registration for the first year of school by a year achieved an above average result when compared to the entire Central Bohemian Region. 

Why?

Mathematic literacy, logical thinking, and healthy self-confidence directly correlate with the way the child would cope with his/her studies, and with future real life problems. The method effectively builds the principal dispositions, irreplaceable for the development of children, as well as the economy and welfare of society.

I’ll explain to you!

In the second half-term, our son changed schools for one where the Hejny method is used for teaching maths. Instead of “These problems again”, he comes home every day with new discoveries and interesting tasks that he keeps explaining to his parents.

Prof. Hejny’s lecture in Prostejov

A lecture on the Prof. Hejny method took place on the last day of February in Prostejov. It attracted attention among both Mensa members and teachers, which resulted in almost 90 people coming to listen to the lecture. At the beginning, the Professor explained the method’s principles, and then demonstrated the way that the method works with several examples. In the end, questions from the auditorium were answered. The entire lecture took over 3 hours, and was very inspirational.

I would like to express my thanks to the lecture organizer, Tomas Blumenstein, and also to express my hope that the intended co-operation of Mensa with Prof. Hejny and his team is going to be successful.

Related topics

• Reports from past events

28.2.2013

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