this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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I would understand "unsolvable" or something but 0 just hurts. Later you learn to specify "within natural numbers" and it's totally reasonable to stay within the number range you have learned so far and it would be fine to tell the kid "you're not wrong but let's keep it simple". Just don't teach things they have to unlearn later.
My brother was in a similar situation where he said the square root of -1 is i and the teacher was impressed and it was discussed as a positive thing at home
Speaking of not teaching things kids have to unlearn later, I've often wondered why we don't just start teaching math with the expectation that you solve for "x".
i.e. Instead of
Write
This would prime the child to expect that math is about finding an unknown and you've already introduced the unknown that will be most prominent in their academic career. This will also reduce the steps necessary when teaching how to balance an equation as you no longer have the "well actually you were always solving for 'x' we just didn't write it, so you didn't know, also we're never going to use 'x' for multiplication again." stage.
But I'm not a teacher, parent, or child psychologist and this is just my blathering hypothesis based on watching my peers struggle with math for years.
I've taken accustomed to writing
2 + 3 = ___or2 + ___ = 5and then later seamlessly transitioning to "2 + 3 = z, write downz:" or "2 + t = y, wherey= 5. write downt:"because it just seems so natural to identify these letters with natural things, such as numbers of beer bottles or cookies. kids typically giggle over these things because they think i'm making it up to be funny for their entertainment.