© 1997 -1999 by  Dmitri Droujkov and Maria Droujkova. All rights to these pages are reserved. The materials of these pages that have free access , with exception of those copyrighted by other people as specified, can be copied and used  for educational purposes by any person or non-for-profit organization if the following two conditions are satisfied:

1. NM webmaster is notified in advance,

and

2. No part of the materials is ever used in any situation that involves compulsory teaching. Mentors using Natural Math materials should support student rights at all times the materials are used. If you know of somebody who uses NM materials with students that do not wish to be taught, PLEASE LET US KNOW and we will try to stop it.

Some materials are contributed by people who do not work in the Natural Math project. In this case, these people have all the rights to their contribution.

If you would like to make a link to any of the pages, or copy the materials to your pages, please let us know.

Student rights

It feels strange to list things that are so natural and obvious. Yet the following rights are so casually violated by so many people that we decided to write them down. Please do not hesitate to contribute.

The following list applies to any student, of any age, gender, learning success history, etc. Even the youngest learners' rights should be respected. NM people strive to keep student rights all the time. It works.

Rights are worth very little if they are not guaranteed. Each Right here is followed by a brief statement of what mentor has to do to guarantee it.

1. Every student owns his or her time. Student's time is his or her own to give or to keep, to spend on learning or on other activities of the student's choice, and to be responsible for.
   • It is of great importance for mentor to deeply understand this Right and to behave accordingly. It means, among other things, that mentor can't force a student to spend time on learning, and that mentor should not waste any student's time on busywork, inefficient algorithms, outdated material, and such.
2. Every student can choose personal goals in learning.  Each student decides whether the goal is to be able to do research, to enter college, to win a competition, to solve all problems in a particular book, to have fun with a subject, or something else.
   • It is not a mentor's responsibility to "make sure" that a student "covers" this or that topic. Mentor's responsibility is, first, to make possible and, hopefully, pleasant for each student to learn topics of that student's choice, and second, to introduce the student gently to many new topics to choose from.
3. Every student has the right to privacy of learning. Progress monitoring results (such as test scores) of each student should be kept as confidential as medical records and, in general, should only be available to the student and (possibly) mentor, with the student having sole discretion as to who can access that information.
   • Mentor should not discuss any student's learning  process with anybody without the student's explicit permission. It means, for example, that mentor can talk about current topics, but not about particular student's progress in these topics.
4. Every student can choose his or her own methods and means of learning, including his or her teachers. Of course, only a limited number of options is available at any given time, but always more than one.
   • The younger and less experienced is a student, the less he or she knows about various options. It is mentor's duty to introduce to each student as many options as possible, and then look for more. Mentor should teach students to use various methods of learning (books, computer, people, video, etc.). Mentor should also encourage students to explore different formats of learning (reading books, solving problems alone, with teacher or with other students, listening to lectures, using interactive software, and so on). And, finally, mentor should show students many ways of organizing learning (free exploration, fixed-curriculum courses, exam preparation, and so on).

Thank you for your time.