Is It Okay To Count on Fingers?

From Growing Without Schooling 70:

Reader Connie Knudtson sent us this article from the 2/19/89 Rochester, NY Democrat and Chronicle, saying, ‘I thought you might find this interesting. Shortly before I saw this I heard of a teacher commenting, very negatively, that a lot of homeschooled kids counted on their fingers.”

Schoolteachers have scolded children for counting on their fingers for decades, but some researchers say finger-counting can keep good students good and help not-so-good students become better. Robert Siegler and Dennis Kerkman, Carnegie Mellon University Psychology professors, say their studies show there’s nothing wrong with finger-counting, and teachers probably should show their students how to do it correctly. 

“They’re going to do it anyway. Every teacher we’ve talked to about this has told us that telling children not to use their fingers doesn’t work . . .  We think children are right to do this because if you don’t know the answer very well, then it’s better to be right than to be wrong.”

Good students rely on their memories more than not-so-good students or perfectionists to solve math and reading problems, according to a study of 80 children at an elementary school in suburban Monroeville. When they couldn’t remember an answer, good students turn to backup methods, including sounding out words, using a dictionary, counting up from a number to add or down from a number to subtract — or using their fingers. Perfectionists used backup methods even when they could remember the answer, frequently taking longer to solve problems as a result, Siegler and Kerkman discovered. 

Not-so-good students gave the most incorrect answers, as expected, but also displayed poor finger-counting skills. Poor students may do poor work because they are bad at backup strategies, including finger-counting, Siegler said. Siegler hopes to develop ways to teach not-so-good students how to use backup strategies and to determine whether this kind of teaching can help them learn more quickly.

[Susannah Sheffer, the GWS editor, adds:] I suspect that being able to use these sorts of backup strategies is an indication of how well you really understand, and trust that there is sense in, what you’re doing. As John Holt observed repeatedly in How Children Fail, you can’t simply teach these strategies, and expect that to be enough, if the foundation of genuine understanding is as shaky as it is for so many children in school.