Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they
never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, ‘What
does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?’
Instead they demand: ‘How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does
he weigh? How much money does his father make?’ Only from these figures do they
think they have learned anything about him. (Saint-Exupéry, 1958, p. 15)Inclusion
We wrote this book in the understanding that we have written for all children.
Throughout the book the examples we have used cross a range of children; some of
them have been categorised as children with special needs. We prefer not to label
these children since it seems neither relevant nor important to do so. All the chil-
dren with whom we have worked have been able to express their mathematics on
paper. The diversity of the responses confirmed our own past experiences that chil-
dren think in a diversity of ways. We have discussed the children’s marks and written
methods with them and ‘labelling’ the children did not cross our minds. We both
believe that it has essentially freed the children who have been labelled as having
‘special needs’, to have opportunities to put their own mathematical marks on
paper. Robins states that ‘the mathematical experiences of many children with learn-
ing difficulties have centred around worksheets’ and continues by proposing that
such materials may be overused (Robbins, 2002, p. 133). In Chapter 10 we outlined
the disadvantage of using worksheets. For children who may have a particular
special need, using their own thinking about layout and making other decisions for
themselves have helped them towards independence. There has been much stress on
understanding in mathematics and a move away from hurrying children through
standardised procedures. When children use their own ways of representing it is
easier to assess what they understand and the nature of any difficulties. Anghileri
supports this view, reasoning that ‘errors and misconceptions may be identified229
Children,
Teachers and
(^12) Possibilities
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