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Qlinkenstein t1_j779mp7 wrote

I had a 15 year old kid work for me last year and I had to teach him how a tape measure worked.

"If I tell you to cut something 10 feet long or 120 inches it is the same thing. If I tell you give me a 2x4 that is 5 and a half feet long, find the 5 foot mark and add 6 inches."

He couldn't figure it out, no matter how many times or how much I showed him. I eventually had to let him go because he fucked up so much lumber that was effectively paying him more than my head carpenter. When I suggested that he focus on math, he told me his mom and dad weren't good at math either. Good thing they decided to home school him...

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Reneeisme t1_j77j1qx wrote

I get involved with kids like this at the college level and that's exactly the sort of "difficult to bridge" gaps in learning that I see across the board. I spoke to one kid years ago after he was kicked from his university class for repeatedly copying from others on tests and even worksheets. I'm not sure, but it seemed like he'd never produced work on his own, his entire educational career to that point. He was homeschooled and the parent would apparently mostly do the work and then he'd just copy it. I guess they thought he'd absorb it by copying it, but what he absorbed was the idea that he'd just always be expected to copy. The idea of knowing enough to actually produce something himself, instead of just copying someone, seemed foreign to him. I don't know how to help a kid who has so fundamentally missed out, but he dropped out so I don't know what would have happened had we tried. I hope he got a job somewhere, but I don't know how.

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