2+2 = 4…but WHY?

Since my kid started school and I started taking his studies [though I do it very rarely] as part of my duty as a father, I am getting it how difficult to teach a kid, that too of 6th or 7th grade.

The school books and teachers try explaining the kids with simple, basic steps, which for us seem pretty boring.

We are well versed with shortcuts and many a times ‘Ctrl C’ ‘Ctrl V’ type, find the step by step process too difficult and cumbersome.

Sometime he understands the way I explain to him and many a times he doesn’t.

Every time after 5–10 minutes, I give up saying ‘nothing will happen with you’, actually here I am unable to explain in simple language to him.

Then I keep thinking, if I am getting frustrated with one guy in just 5–10 minutes, how do the teachers at the school might be coping-up with the class with 25–30 different types of curious brains.

I always have this dream that I am teaching and one of the kids asked me a very basic and simple question — 2 + 2? I answered 4, but then he asked Why?

I got dumbstruck at that “WHY?”.

We just learnt 2+2 = 4 and 3X2 =6, but I as a kid never asked why 4 and 6 and why not something else.

Being a grown up adult and going to office doing official work, doesn’t even know of the “WHY” of that simple math question was beyond the understanding and unexpected to my kid.

I extensively searched for the justification of that addition or for that matter any mathematical equation.

I found it’s based on “Priory Knowledge” — which is epistemic [another difficult word] justification, which is independent of any experience.

What I understood from this is like — bhai ye aisahi hi hai, [Dude, this is what it is].

But how to explain this to the curious minds at the school.

I thought of giving a simple problem like the below –

There are 4 whales on the tree top and suddenly 3 pigeons came from the river near the tree, a man came flying and shot 2 whales, so how many living animals remained there?

Firstly he got confused, how come whales to be on the tree and pigeons in the water, I asked him to just think math/numbers and try to answer. He answered correctly.

Then I told him anything illogical can happen, fish outside water, man can fly, birds in the water, this defies the regular logic, but the Maths — whatever it may be, remains the same. You replace whatever animal, things in place of that example, math never changes, whether its India, China, US or even on Mars.

I don’t know, whether I sound correct or reasonable and whether he understood my point, but yes, I am getting more and more worried teaching to kids.

Salute to all school teachers — from 1st to 7th standard, especially because, till that time the curiosity among the kids still remains.

If you have any simple answer to this, please help.