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I couldn't find any warning that practising doing it wrong counts against you. Thinking back to when I was ten years old and we practised sums in school I would

I couldn't find any warning that practising doing it wrong counts against you. Thinking back to when I was ten years old and we practised sums in school I would get nine out of ten of while many in the class would get four out of ten. We diverged and I went on to study mathematics at Cambridge, but I'm left with a question about the origin of the divergence. At ten years old I wasn't putting in extra hours on arithmetic. On the other hand, if you only get four out of ten there is probably a reason, such as not understanding carrying. When you add up, with carries stuck in at random as you hope for the best, you both get half marks, and you practise doing it wrong. What is the value of an hour of practising doing it wrong? 1/2? 0? -1? -2?

lars512 16y ago
To drill into your example more, I think that many small issues in proficiency get carried on through schooling, especially in areas like mathematics. My little sister-in-law was having trouble with it at school, and started doing some Kumon method remedial classes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumon_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumon_method The material was embarrassingly simple for her, but speed and accuracy improvements at this simple level suddenly made the more difficult mathematics her peers were studying accessible, and her ability picked up substantially. I'd say this is an example, not so much of practicing doing it wrong, but of practicing the wrong thing for her level. Given that skills build on on another, plenty of people might be practicing later skills poorly, instead of the base skills they really need to progress.