Eagletools:Mission

Eagle House = 408/449-9039

Eagle House Toolbox is an educational resource intended to support students K-12, especially those taking high school Math. We concentrate here on practical tools and skip definitive explanation in favor of "plain talk".

Many of the exercises demonstrated here have been used in actual tutoring sessions, with excellent results. If you like what you see and you live in the South San Francisco Bay Area, please call "Bear" at 408/449-9039 for an evaluation of your needs at no charge. If you are a parent, teacher, tutor, or student anywhere in the world, we hope you will try these exercises yourself. Please let us know how they work for you.

Everyone involved in school -- students, parents, teachers -- tries his best; yet many students are completely lost, especially in Math. By the time they enter high school, many have decided the subject is impossible. They are not merely resigned to failure; they are committed to it. This is a crime -- but who is the criminal?

There is a certain attitude about school that says the goal is to have the "right answer", especially on the exam. Examinations consist of question after question, each with a single "right answer", and success or failure depends entirely on a student's ability to pick it. Never mind that this is a useless skill in real life; it is easy to create such an exam and easy to score it. Each student departs school with a little number written across his forehead and now we all know exactly how "smart" he is.

This attitude is bad when applied to any subject but in Math, it is fatal. Math is a formal science, the patient unfolding of the hidden structure of All through the tool of Logic. It is impossible to perform any but the simplest arithmetic without thinking; and 12 years spent getting the "right answer" do nothing to build this essential skill.

Whoever is responsible for first debasing the exercise of the mind into painful, pointless drudgery is long dead; so we have nobody to blame but ourselves now. Around the world, some of us have taken the risk of teaching real Mathematics. We have seen the payoff when our students not only learn to think for themselves and to enjoy Math; but also breeze through their schoolbooks. They may find the work boring but never difficult.

Eagle House students learn to think by doing. Here are some of the tools in our toolbox.