My Moment of Self-Realization

Elementary schools are where people spend 6 naive years. People in my age were studying in order to avoid physical punishment, in the belief that education would a bring good future to us, for the sake of amusing parents, for the desire for being concerned, etc. at elementary schools. And arithmetic was one of the most stressed subjects. Multiplication was the onethat confused me most.

I am one good example. I was educated with a pre-education-reform education, and studied multiplication in the third grade. When I was in the third grade, I had homework almost everyday, and I just could not do the calculation. Every time when I was doing the arithmetic homework, I guessed an answer and wrote the number down. Inevitably, I always got my exercise book full of red crosses. One morning, my teacher, a sweet woman who was the head-teacher of my third-grade-class, thought up an idea to help the students, like me, who did not understand how to do multiplication. She named some intellectual students as tutors, and assigned each of them with one less smart peer. Luckily, my tutor was a bright, cute, and patient girl. At beginning, she taught me how to multiply two multi-digit numbers step by step. She demonstrated some examples, and asked me to do one by myself. And after I did, I made a correct answer, and I thought I really understood how to do multiplication. However, latter the same day, when I was doing my arithmetic at home, I was totally lost. I could not recall how to do it, and I therefore left them blank. The next morning, she lent me her exercise book for checking my answers. But I just replicated her works. The next morning, I did it again. I directly copied her works again and again since then. Until one day morning, one of her friends noticed that I was taking a shortcut, then her friend asked her “Won’t you teach him?”, and she replied “It’s not worth my time to teach such person.”

It was hurt, truly, but I did not cry, nor stop copying, because I would rather be able to in my exercise book unashamedly. That day, I replayed the words she said many times, and I could not help feeling like I betrayed her. Latter, when I was doing my arithmetic homework at home, I still did not know how to do multiplication. I reviewed those exercises. I mimic the processes which I copied before. I felt like I gradually understood how to do it. I finished the homework assigned that day, and I also redid the homework assigned before by myself. I felt I really knew the methodology of multiplication well. The next morning, I borrowed her exercise book for checking my answers and processes, and I found all of them were correct. I should have her to thank for making me be able to study much more difficult and complicated mathematics today.