How a Lack of Vocabulary Can Turn a Child Off to a Subject

Consider the case of a child I observed through his eighth and ninth years. Jim was a highly verbal and mathophobic child from a professional family. His love for words and for talking showed itself very early, long before he went to school. The mathophobia developed at school. My theory is that it came as a direct result of his verbal precocity. I learned from his parents that Jim had developed an early habit of describing in words, often aloud, whatever he was doing as he did it. This habit...