Maths is not for compartmentalising

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”, in exploring the comparison between the Asian manner of naming numbers and that used in English, Mr. Gladwell quotes Karen Fuson, “a Northwestern University psychologist who has closely studied [sic] Asian-Western differences. ‘I think that it makes the whole attitude toward math different. Instead of being a rote learning thing, there’s a pattern I can figure out. There is an expectation that I can do this. There is an expectation that it is sensible.”
The disturbing thing in this comment by Ms. Fuson is the unsaid presumption that maths is viewed as being something that a child cannot do; something that isn’t sensible but arbitrary, and so must be learnt by rote rather than calculated by reason.
But English speaking children have by definition learnt to speak English. There can be no more irregular and arbitrary language than English (even when the spelling has been simplified as in its American version). So if children are capable of mastering this monster, why do they have such difficulty in mastering the regular language of maths? One reason is that maths is taught as a set of rules. These rules apply to the subject of maths, which is taught separately. So children, rather than integrate maths into their everyday experiences compartmentalise maths. The upshot of this is that they don’t learn to translate between numbers and the English language, and therefore they don’t see the connection between the rules of maths and the logic they are derived from. So often in real life, maths is used simply to save having to wade through much logical reasoning, but that is not apparent to a child. Having compartmentalised maths in their minds, children shut off the possibility of linking it to the rest of their lives. At Puppet Maths we use our puppets to create situations where puzzles are solved both using maths and logic. In this way the equivalence of the two approaches is demonstrated inherently in our teaching.