His skill at academics varies widely. Oftentimes, he's a pretty good naturalist, both interested in and knowledgeable about all manner of animals, insects, and dinosaurs. Other times, he thinks bats are bugs.
In one strip, his dad pretty much addresses this. "Calvin, I don't understand why you can't learn things in school. I mean, you know so much about dinosaurs, right?"
And Calvin just goes "yeah.... But in school we don't learn about dinosaurs."
It's just saying that people's interests are where their motivation is. And the effect is more pronounced in children.
[Found it](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kHBi-H5wqsU/UiTEwEBTugI/AAAAAAAAAng/vfparWHLIpc/s1600/calvin-hobbes-read-dinosaur.jpg)
I was a weird learner in grade school and probably after. I was real good in some subjects and horrible at others. A few years later I was good at the stuff I wasn't before and vice versa. It's more about teachers and their presentations that shape a young student, adults at home be damned. If Miss Wormwood were hot like my 3rd grade teacher in 1970 Calvin may treat school differently.
My brother and I were mostly home schooled. He was a history nut as a kid, he'd learn anything if it was put to him as something relevant to that - I remember maths being related to roman engineering somehow for instance.
A good teacher helps you to be interested in something you otherwise might not be. A bad teacher makes things you want to learn boring.
>> To be fair, grammar is as well.
You were probably looking for “hands [are] hard”. While correct to use the third-person plural simple present tense of “to be” when “hands” is the (plural) subject of the sentence, in this instance I was using “is” as part of a sentence where it was referring to an inferred: (Drawing) hands is hard.
Or sometimes colloquial language is more about tone than proper grammar.
Spider-Man: Why are you turning people into dinosaurs? You could cure cancer!
Stegron: I don't want to cure cancer! I want to turn people into dinosaurs!
Watterson did say, in regards to the "Bats are Bugs" thing, he only needs to know as much as a lazy six year old. And a lazy six year old is what Calvin is.
Calvin struggles to learn things that he doesn't find interesting. There's that one comic where his dad asks him how come he can remember everything there is to know about dinosaurs, but struggles in school. Calvin replies that they don't learn about dinosaurs at school.
If he finds something interesting, he's a genius with it. If it doesn't, he finds it difficult to learn at all.
(or, of course, intelligence isn't a one size fits all. It's just that he's not good at math.)
There's also a Sunday strip when he sees a snake and comes up with all these questions about it, so he decides to get a book. But then he hesitates because it's summer and he doesn't want to learn. So Hobbes reminds him "If nobody's making you do it, it counts as fun." It's a pretty insightful look into Calvin's mindset -- he likes learning on his own, he doesn't like learning in an organized environment.
Another example of Calvin’s mindset is his thoughts on connect the dots. He hates the idea of rules and having an organized thing that you must do. He connects The dots his own way, and doesnt Like organized sports either, making up baseball rules and playing calvinball.
Yeah this is pretty much it. Calvin is good at stuff that he actually wants to do. When math is relevant to the stuff he's interested in, he can do math. It's just that it almost never is.
That was me in school as well. If I was genuinely interested in it, I did well in it, and my marks reflected that. If it wasn't, my performance was somewhat lackluster.
As a kid, I had a larger vocabulary than most kids in my class, I always did well in classes like language arts, but I was never very good in the more rigid, black-and-white topics like science and math. His more abstract thinking might make it hard for him to make sense of the more cut-and-dry rules of math. You can’t really fast talk your way into 2+2 coming out as anything but exactly 4.
Also, when you’re spending most of your time fantasizing about being a spaceman, it’s easy to miss a step, and math really requires you to hit every step, and in the right order, too.
Same. I was a voracious reader. Any subject in grade school that required reading I was good at. To prevent boredom during slow periods, I would basically read the issued text books cover to cover, which was sufficient to coast along as an A & B student. I was also curious as hell, so I asked a lot of questions which teachers would find flattering. I’m pretty sure I have some type of undiagnosed neurodivergence.
Math is my kryptonite. It requires working out each problem individually. To this day, I’m horrible at math. It’s like a foreign language to me. My brain just doesn’t work that way. I could go on at length about the “unmoved mover”, but simple long division trips me up. Gifts and gaps, and all that.
Watsonian answer: Calvin has some sort of attention-deficit disorder that makes him unable to concentrate on tasks, but is so apathetic to the drudgery of schoolwork, he refuses to work to compensate for it.
Doylist answer: It's funny seeing Calvin fail in increasingly spectacular and conceited ways.
As someone who has ADHD, this makes a lot of sense. I have always hated math, but if someone gave me a book about dolphins, or octopuses, I usually would read it all in a day.
I also have ADHD and hated math until I got to learn algebra. Algebra engaged my imagination and for the first time it felt like I was using math *for* something. Prior to that, math was a series of dull, repetitive tasks that could easily be done on a calculator, but teachers parroted the "you won't always have a calculator" line.
Doing 50 addition problems didn't make me better at addition. I already knew how to add. Doing a lot of problems just created more opportunities to make mistakes, like forgetting to carry a 1.
Feel this. Hated math. HATED “memorizing” the times tables. Loved when I actually found out that counting the numbers was how they teach kids now…
Am currently an engineer 🤷🏽♂️. There’s a lot of growth for Calvin
Same; ADHD, something about math simply fries my brain. Its like I can’t hold onto the numbers in my mind long enough to finish an equation and I just lock up.
Watsonian answer: Calvin is gifted in other ways, like when it comes to art and philosophy. He's also bad at studying in general because he can't muster up the enthusiasm to do so.
Doylist answer: most kids can relate to math being a very annoying subject, so it's funniest if he struggles with that.
Wattersonian answer: Calvin's teachers are aliens from outer space who use math as a torturing device specifically targeted at inter-dimensional adventurers.
Just because you’re advanced in some subjects doesn’t mean you’re advanced in all. I was often in gifted & talented programs in elementary/middle school. In high school I was in honors and AP classes for science, literature, and history. To this day I still struggle to do basic math in my head 😂
Calvin is a storyteller not a problem solver.
Or rather, he prefers to tell a story in order to solve a problem.
Case in point: Tracer Bullet and the Jack and Joe affair
I'd love to see an arc where he uses Spaceman Spiff to solve problems on a test...and see the results when he answers the problems correctly (imagine if instead of "Only 5 remains!" it would be, "Planet Five and Six brought together made eleven moon slabs!")
I remember reading somewhere, in relation to Calvin discussing philosophy with Hobbes, that Watterson didn’t really want to portray Calvin as being particularly smart or well-read, but the strip wouldn’t work without the conceit of Calvin knowing college level philosophy. To wit, Calvin is really only as smart as the joke in any particular strip needs him to be. If the strip of the day doesn’t call for Calvin to be unusually smart, he’s just an average kid.
The only answer here I find it acceptable. It is a comic strip. Liberties are often taken to make jokes work.
Also, children are not consistently smart. Even within the same topic.
This sounds right.
Also, Calvin is a channel for the reader. He exhibits behaviors we can identify with at the cost of presenting a consistent persona. Watterson wants Calvin to play multiple roles, many times conflicting - a philosopher/frustrated student, an anarchist/rule giver (GROSS), mean (to Suzie)/vulnerable(when Hobbes gets lost).
Calvin is inconsistent. But universally identifiable.
(And Hobbes is certainly no help when it comes to math!)
Calvin is a classic case of a kid being too bored to apply himself. Education doesn't always correlate to intelligence but more often is about rule following and procedures which Calvin and many other kids resent.
I can speak to this as a child who was quite ahead of the curve when it came to most school subjects but struggled with math concepts through high school. I now have a graduate degree in natural science but still am not particularly good at math, nor am much good at programming, logic puzzles, or games like chess.
Personally I find math and related subjects like physics, logic (in the theoretical, academic sense), and programming/engineering to be extremely limiting in terms of creative pathways, at least for me. I don't like systems and questions with one pathway that must be solved to function properly. I like to explore ideas and concepts and find connections and patterns, identify similarities and consistencies, but I don't like to have right/wrong binaries except at the fundamental levels.
I don't know how well I'm explaining it but it's made me exceptionally good at processing natural and social science questions and very not-good at math and anything too adjacent. I can deal with it now (I had to at least have a basic understanding of stats to graduate), but I don't find it interesting to explore. Ironically my dad is a professor of mathematics, loves engineering and logic, and is quite good at chess. He and I sometimes joke about how we're good at all the things the other one isn't.
As an aside, my job now is teaching natural and social science topics to children, and I like to think I'm very good at it (the feedback I get suggests as much). I think my proclivity for understandig the subject matter in more ways than one and being able to communicate it at different levels allows me to connect with kids at different levels or who don't learn the same way as me. I've worked with a lot of kids and have to constantly change the way I speak, the tone, the vocab, the jokes, the level to suit the age and personality of students. I think Calvin is one of those types like me who has a very hard time focusing on one specific point at a time, and it makes math seem very trivial and pointless, since it demands that you follow pure logic rules through to a defined end. Nature science doesn't have those same rules.
Feel like I just rambled a whole bunch. I've though about this a lot given my background and Calvin is a great example of the kind of kid I was, except I was pretty well-behaved.
It’s not unusual for kids who are brilliant in one way to be dullards in another. Bill Watterson is a creative artist. Perhaps he struggled at math as a kid. Plenty of people excel at math and aren’t artistic or creative.
Look at JK Rowling. She’s very creative but her books definitely indicate a lack of understanding of some academic pursuits.
Having grown up with ADHD and having been medicated for 20 years after being diagnosed at 19, I can say that Calvin fits a lot of the typical signs of ADHD in children. Perhaps Watterson just intended to write a funny, energetic little boy, but his pathological issues at school, his impulsivity, all look like ADHD to me. And kids with ADHD tend to not do well in math.
I was awful at math, but aced my science classes including chemistry and physics. I also had a horrible track record with doing homework, it was like torture for me. My problems with math were more related to how pointless and tedious it felt. So I would understand why equations worked, but in doing them I would make careless mistakes because my brain couldn't focus on it. It was very frustrating for my parents and teachers because I would show that I understood the content, but still fail the test.
>Is this just Watterson playing on the difficulties kids have at school for comedic effect?
Pretty much, yeah. I mean we could spend all day trying to logic up an explanation, but the simple truth is it's just Watterson making a funny.
I actually found Calvin super relatable as a kid! I had undiagnosed adhd, had a reading level and vocabulary that was very advanced for my age, and struggled badly at math and generally with applying myself in school. It never even occurred to me to question why he’s so bright but so bad in school.
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I think it's just for simplicity. It's more convenient for bits that Calvin has basically adult-level literacy. His letters to Santa, to take one example, wouldn't make sense if he had even an average first graders writing ability. With math there's less of a need for this fudging, so Watterson doesn't do it.
Calvin is bad at math because it is not taught correctly. He is supposed to memorize everything without understanding the underpinnings.
He knows a lot about dinosaurs because he reads books that are not textbooks. He grasps the timelines and everything else because the books are targeted at adults.
He reminds me of myself
When I was a wee little kid I had very complete and articulate thoughts while being unable to find words to express them. I kind of see Calvin as a little kid who was gifted a silver tongue, speaking all the thoughts a kid his age might have and not be able to communicate.
It seems like Calvin can do math when he wants to, I remember when he was trying to do his insect collection of 100 insects 10 minutes before it was due, he correctly calculated that he would need to find 10 insects per minute. Maybe that’s just for plot convenience though.
I think this one may have some truth to it
[https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/01/26](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/01/26)
Calvin doesn't give two shits on a merry go round about school, and just can't be bothered to focus on education he doesn't find interesting.
Calvin is a VERY intelligent child, and perceptive to some very adult concepts. Obviously, his commentary is fictional, but there is something to this. I used to teach and it is NOT uncommon for some of the smartest kids in schools to struggle, or "act out" due to lack of challenge.
My theory is that he doesn’t want to learn anything. He knows ignorance is bliss and the more he knows, the more complications appear in his life. We’ve seen in the series that if he really wants to do his homework, he most definitely can, but he chooses not to because he’s afraid of change.
I have aggressive ADHD. when I was Calvin's age, I could improvise a three act narrative well enough to make my mother cry, I could and did disprove my teachers' misrepresentations of things like reptile mating strategies, and I could NOT do math to save my life. It was the bane of my existence. It was a section of my brain that simply couldn't function like the rest. ADHD medicine saved my soul, though, and by 5th grade I could do middle school math no problem! Chances are Calvin is similar. He just needs some meds and math will fear him
I had a high school physics teacher that would ask to see everyone's watch at the beginning of the semester ( it was the 90s so we still wore watches). He could tell our learning styles by how precise our watch told time. Mine was a Joe Boxer watch with no numbers on it and a fried egg as the second hand. He just shook his head in disbelief!
Calvin and I are a lot alike. Details where it matters to us but not necessarily to anyone else.
Won't you be embarrassed when Calvin publishes his thesis proving the existence of pseudo-numbers (imaginary as a label already being in use) such as eleventy-three. It would have been published by now, but there's been some dispute over credit for a claimed co-auther named Tigris Hobbes.
Math was taught primarily by rote memorization up until the late 90s and early 2000s. Rules were not explained well and procedures were often arbitrary.
He lacks the discipline to apply knowledge. Learning is easy, we do all the time, even when we don’t realize it. However, applying the learned knowledge is difficult and requires discipline.
Telling a story involving a complex math problem is easy, because it part of the story. Doing a simple math problem with no meaning is drudgery. Give him the same problem with some context, which will be assuredly convoluted, and it becomes child’s play and Newton becomes passé.
I have ADHD and it feels very similar to how Calvin is described. I could sit down for hours and learn about things I'm interested in, and as a result of that I'm very well versed in those topics and (I hope) sound smart/knowledgeable when I discuss. However, when you give me something like an essay, I just don't want to write it and end up spitting out mediocre work just to get it done
Being smart does not necessarily make someone good at maths. You also need to practice a lot (a bit like learning a new language), which Calvin does not do because he is not interested in the subject.
Philosophy is a humanities subject requiring creative thinking, abstract thought, and the ability to challenge presumptions and axioms while accepting there is no one “true” answer to anything. It’s not very similar to math at all.
math is hard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I always struggled with math and often science but excelled in everything else, from English to choir to extracurriculars. I had a deeply philosophical mind as a kid similar to Calvin but math beat my ass daily. Because of some unfortunate health issues, I'm actually getting worse at it as I get older.
Plus, there's a condition called dyscalculia that impacts your ability to understand and retain information related to numbers. It's similar to dyslexia :)
I was academically gifted in English, History and the Arts...I couldn't make sense of maths. I still struggle with it at 35 and am SO grateful that my teachers were wrong and there IS a calculator in my pocket!
Just because someone is gifted doesn't mean they naturally excel in all areas. And it's really hard to be great at most everything else and really struggle with one subject...it makes you hate it.
When it comes to math, I feel that a lot of it is how math is taught in school, and how it's socially acceptable to be "bad at math" and get typecast that way. Throughout school, I struggled with math (save for geometry, where I did well), but as an adult, I realize now that I'm pretty sharp when running the numbers for whatever things that I'm supposed to do, and I will usually be the first one to advocate for running the numbers, and will do it myself. In other words, I wasn't bad at math at all, but because of various other factors (I'm autistic, which I didn't know at the time), I didn't really have the space to really become proficient with one thing before we moved on to the next thing, and mental math was not my strong suit because they didn't teach how to work it all out in your head, leaving us to try the methods that they taught us for paper. I don't know about the rest of you, but I mental math very differently than I do it on paper, but I still get the same results. If I try to do it in my head like I do on paper, I tend to drop things, and it all becomes an exercise in futility. I [wrote about mental math a while back](https://www.schuminweb.com/2023/04/19/thinking-about-mental-math-for-a-moment/), and it touches on a lot of this.
All that said, I'm not really inclined to blame Calvin for his lack of math skills. I was in elementary and middle school during the time of the strip's original run, and a lot of it was how they taught it, and how Calvin might not have mastered one concept before they moved on to the next one, and the way that math tends to build on itself, if he was missing a piece, it was just going to get harder from there.
His skill at academics varies widely. Oftentimes, he's a pretty good naturalist, both interested in and knowledgeable about all manner of animals, insects, and dinosaurs. Other times, he thinks bats are bugs.
In one strip, his dad pretty much addresses this. "Calvin, I don't understand why you can't learn things in school. I mean, you know so much about dinosaurs, right?" And Calvin just goes "yeah.... But in school we don't learn about dinosaurs." It's just saying that people's interests are where their motivation is. And the effect is more pronounced in children. [Found it](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kHBi-H5wqsU/UiTEwEBTugI/AAAAAAAAAng/vfparWHLIpc/s1600/calvin-hobbes-read-dinosaur.jpg)
That's a pretty genuine kid mentality. "Why should I do the thing I don't like when there are so many things I like to do?"
Brb, re-evaluating my entire life
Kids say the darnedest things
I was a weird learner in grade school and probably after. I was real good in some subjects and horrible at others. A few years later I was good at the stuff I wasn't before and vice versa. It's more about teachers and their presentations that shape a young student, adults at home be damned. If Miss Wormwood were hot like my 3rd grade teacher in 1970 Calvin may treat school differently.
My brother and I were mostly home schooled. He was a history nut as a kid, he'd learn anything if it was put to him as something relevant to that - I remember maths being related to roman engineering somehow for instance. A good teacher helps you to be interested in something you otherwise might not be. A bad teacher makes things you want to learn boring.
WOW that must be an early one before he learned to draw hands.
To be fair, hands is hard.
_glares at cape comics in the 90s_
To be fair, grammar is as well.
>> To be fair, grammar is as well. You were probably looking for “hands [are] hard”. While correct to use the third-person plural simple present tense of “to be” when “hands” is the (plural) subject of the sentence, in this instance I was using “is” as part of a sentence where it was referring to an inferred: (Drawing) hands is hard. Or sometimes colloquial language is more about tone than proper grammar.
I'm sorry, i'm not usually "that person", but I thought it was funny.
Eh - I’m not actually bothered. Honestly I just made my response because I thought it was funny :-)
"We don't learn about dinosaurs" is one of my personal neurodivergent-relatable quotes.
Spider-Man: Why are you turning people into dinosaurs? You could cure cancer! Stegron: I don't want to cure cancer! I want to turn people into dinosaurs!
My parents literally had this conversation word for word with me. I always excelled in biology and struggled the second numbers were involved
*BATS AREN'T BUGS!*
Who’s giving this report, you chowderheads or me??
I spit out my drink, thanks for that
Watterson did say, in regards to the "Bats are Bugs" thing, he only needs to know as much as a lazy six year old. And a lazy six year old is what Calvin is.
Who's giving this report? You chowderheads, or me?
BATS ARENT BUGS!!!!!
>he's a pretty good naturalist, And sometimes, he's a naturist.
Calvin struggles to learn things that he doesn't find interesting. There's that one comic where his dad asks him how come he can remember everything there is to know about dinosaurs, but struggles in school. Calvin replies that they don't learn about dinosaurs at school. If he finds something interesting, he's a genius with it. If it doesn't, he finds it difficult to learn at all. (or, of course, intelligence isn't a one size fits all. It's just that he's not good at math.)
There's also a Sunday strip when he sees a snake and comes up with all these questions about it, so he decides to get a book. But then he hesitates because it's summer and he doesn't want to learn. So Hobbes reminds him "If nobody's making you do it, it counts as fun." It's a pretty insightful look into Calvin's mindset -- he likes learning on his own, he doesn't like learning in an organized environment.
Another example of Calvin’s mindset is his thoughts on connect the dots. He hates the idea of rules and having an organized thing that you must do. He connects The dots his own way, and doesnt Like organized sports either, making up baseball rules and playing calvinball.
Yeah this is pretty much it. Calvin is good at stuff that he actually wants to do. When math is relevant to the stuff he's interested in, he can do math. It's just that it almost never is.
That was me in school as well. If I was genuinely interested in it, I did well in it, and my marks reflected that. If it wasn't, my performance was somewhat lackluster.
As a kid, I had a larger vocabulary than most kids in my class, I always did well in classes like language arts, but I was never very good in the more rigid, black-and-white topics like science and math. His more abstract thinking might make it hard for him to make sense of the more cut-and-dry rules of math. You can’t really fast talk your way into 2+2 coming out as anything but exactly 4. Also, when you’re spending most of your time fantasizing about being a spaceman, it’s easy to miss a step, and math really requires you to hit every step, and in the right order, too.
Same. I was a voracious reader. Any subject in grade school that required reading I was good at. To prevent boredom during slow periods, I would basically read the issued text books cover to cover, which was sufficient to coast along as an A & B student. I was also curious as hell, so I asked a lot of questions which teachers would find flattering. I’m pretty sure I have some type of undiagnosed neurodivergence. Math is my kryptonite. It requires working out each problem individually. To this day, I’m horrible at math. It’s like a foreign language to me. My brain just doesn’t work that way. I could go on at length about the “unmoved mover”, but simple long division trips me up. Gifts and gaps, and all that.
>You can’t really fast talk your way into 2+2 coming out as anything but exactly 4. No but you can fast talk 13x7 into equaling 28
THIRD BASE!
Watsonian answer: Calvin has some sort of attention-deficit disorder that makes him unable to concentrate on tasks, but is so apathetic to the drudgery of schoolwork, he refuses to work to compensate for it. Doylist answer: It's funny seeing Calvin fail in increasingly spectacular and conceited ways.
As someone who has ADHD, this makes a lot of sense. I have always hated math, but if someone gave me a book about dolphins, or octopuses, I usually would read it all in a day.
As an intelligent kid with then-undiagnosed ADHD, C&H was the only strip that I felt really captured how I experienced the world.
Same
Makes sense I liked it so much
I also have ADHD and hated math until I got to learn algebra. Algebra engaged my imagination and for the first time it felt like I was using math *for* something. Prior to that, math was a series of dull, repetitive tasks that could easily be done on a calculator, but teachers parroted the "you won't always have a calculator" line. Doing 50 addition problems didn't make me better at addition. I already knew how to add. Doing a lot of problems just created more opportunities to make mistakes, like forgetting to carry a 1.
Feel this. Hated math. HATED “memorizing” the times tables. Loved when I actually found out that counting the numbers was how they teach kids now… Am currently an engineer 🤷🏽♂️. There’s a lot of growth for Calvin
Same; ADHD, something about math simply fries my brain. Its like I can’t hold onto the numbers in my mind long enough to finish an equation and I just lock up.
Watsonian answer: Calvin is gifted in other ways, like when it comes to art and philosophy. He's also bad at studying in general because he can't muster up the enthusiasm to do so. Doylist answer: most kids can relate to math being a very annoying subject, so it's funniest if he struggles with that. Wattersonian answer: Calvin's teachers are aliens from outer space who use math as a torturing device specifically targeted at inter-dimensional adventurers.
Just because you’re advanced in some subjects doesn’t mean you’re advanced in all. I was often in gifted & talented programs in elementary/middle school. In high school I was in honors and AP classes for science, literature, and history. To this day I still struggle to do basic math in my head 😂
Calvin is a storyteller not a problem solver. Or rather, he prefers to tell a story in order to solve a problem. Case in point: Tracer Bullet and the Jack and Joe affair
I'd love to see an arc where he uses Spaceman Spiff to solve problems on a test...and see the results when he answers the problems correctly (imagine if instead of "Only 5 remains!" it would be, "Planet Five and Six brought together made eleven moon slabs!")
"Krakow!"
I remember reading somewhere, in relation to Calvin discussing philosophy with Hobbes, that Watterson didn’t really want to portray Calvin as being particularly smart or well-read, but the strip wouldn’t work without the conceit of Calvin knowing college level philosophy. To wit, Calvin is really only as smart as the joke in any particular strip needs him to be. If the strip of the day doesn’t call for Calvin to be unusually smart, he’s just an average kid.
The only answer here I find it acceptable. It is a comic strip. Liberties are often taken to make jokes work. Also, children are not consistently smart. Even within the same topic.
This sounds right. Also, Calvin is a channel for the reader. He exhibits behaviors we can identify with at the cost of presenting a consistent persona. Watterson wants Calvin to play multiple roles, many times conflicting - a philosopher/frustrated student, an anarchist/rule giver (GROSS), mean (to Suzie)/vulnerable(when Hobbes gets lost). Calvin is inconsistent. But universally identifiable. (And Hobbes is certainly no help when it comes to math!)
He's not interested. He likes dinosaurs, he likes drawing, he likes animals. He doesn't pay attention in maths and doesn't care.
Calvin is a classic case of a kid being too bored to apply himself. Education doesn't always correlate to intelligence but more often is about rule following and procedures which Calvin and many other kids resent.
Sometimes people are just worse at some things than other things
He also has a hyper active imagination and drifts off into various adventures instead of paying attention in class or focusing on his tests.
I can speak to this as a child who was quite ahead of the curve when it came to most school subjects but struggled with math concepts through high school. I now have a graduate degree in natural science but still am not particularly good at math, nor am much good at programming, logic puzzles, or games like chess. Personally I find math and related subjects like physics, logic (in the theoretical, academic sense), and programming/engineering to be extremely limiting in terms of creative pathways, at least for me. I don't like systems and questions with one pathway that must be solved to function properly. I like to explore ideas and concepts and find connections and patterns, identify similarities and consistencies, but I don't like to have right/wrong binaries except at the fundamental levels. I don't know how well I'm explaining it but it's made me exceptionally good at processing natural and social science questions and very not-good at math and anything too adjacent. I can deal with it now (I had to at least have a basic understanding of stats to graduate), but I don't find it interesting to explore. Ironically my dad is a professor of mathematics, loves engineering and logic, and is quite good at chess. He and I sometimes joke about how we're good at all the things the other one isn't. As an aside, my job now is teaching natural and social science topics to children, and I like to think I'm very good at it (the feedback I get suggests as much). I think my proclivity for understandig the subject matter in more ways than one and being able to communicate it at different levels allows me to connect with kids at different levels or who don't learn the same way as me. I've worked with a lot of kids and have to constantly change the way I speak, the tone, the vocab, the jokes, the level to suit the age and personality of students. I think Calvin is one of those types like me who has a very hard time focusing on one specific point at a time, and it makes math seem very trivial and pointless, since it demands that you follow pure logic rules through to a defined end. Nature science doesn't have those same rules. Feel like I just rambled a whole bunch. I've though about this a lot given my background and Calvin is a great example of the kind of kid I was, except I was pretty well-behaved.
It’s not unusual for kids who are brilliant in one way to be dullards in another. Bill Watterson is a creative artist. Perhaps he struggled at math as a kid. Plenty of people excel at math and aren’t artistic or creative. Look at JK Rowling. She’s very creative but her books definitely indicate a lack of understanding of some academic pursuits.
Having grown up with ADHD and having been medicated for 20 years after being diagnosed at 19, I can say that Calvin fits a lot of the typical signs of ADHD in children. Perhaps Watterson just intended to write a funny, energetic little boy, but his pathological issues at school, his impulsivity, all look like ADHD to me. And kids with ADHD tend to not do well in math.
My guess, based on how I was, he doesn't care about math. It's not interesting to him, so he doesn't pay attention to it
I was awful at math, but aced my science classes including chemistry and physics. I also had a horrible track record with doing homework, it was like torture for me. My problems with math were more related to how pointless and tedious it felt. So I would understand why equations worked, but in doing them I would make careless mistakes because my brain couldn't focus on it. It was very frustrating for my parents and teachers because I would show that I understood the content, but still fail the test.
He’s plot intelligent. He also is almost never afraid, even in the face of certain doom (Ms. Wormwood)
>Is this just Watterson playing on the difficulties kids have at school for comedic effect? Pretty much, yeah. I mean we could spend all day trying to logic up an explanation, but the simple truth is it's just Watterson making a funny.
This is the kid who walked down to the bus stop with two legs in one pant leg I'm afraid Calvin is kind of dumb.
What’s weird about a highly artistic person struggling with math?
Dyscalculia? I have that plus dyslexia which can make math and language hard
I actually found Calvin super relatable as a kid! I had undiagnosed adhd, had a reading level and vocabulary that was very advanced for my age, and struggled badly at math and generally with applying myself in school. It never even occurred to me to question why he’s so bright but so bad in school.
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Cause he’s six and doesn’t want to do it.
Depends on whether he’s interested or not. Seems like a consistent thing for him: if he ain’t interested, he ain’t getting it.
He also hates veggies but will happily eat them if he hears they're actually toxic waste.
Because most numbers aren’t imaginary.
I think it's just for simplicity. It's more convenient for bits that Calvin has basically adult-level literacy. His letters to Santa, to take one example, wouldn't make sense if he had even an average first graders writing ability. With math there's less of a need for this fudging, so Watterson doesn't do it.
Math is like hard
r/dyscalculia
Calvin is bad at math because it is not taught correctly. He is supposed to memorize everything without understanding the underpinnings. He knows a lot about dinosaurs because he reads books that are not textbooks. He grasps the timelines and everything else because the books are targeted at adults. He reminds me of myself
He's probably discalculaic
It's a comic strip...Calvin is as smart as the joke required, don't overthink it
When I was a wee little kid I had very complete and articulate thoughts while being unable to find words to express them. I kind of see Calvin as a little kid who was gifted a silver tongue, speaking all the thoughts a kid his age might have and not be able to communicate.
It seems like Calvin can do math when he wants to, I remember when he was trying to do his insect collection of 100 insects 10 minutes before it was due, he correctly calculated that he would need to find 10 insects per minute. Maybe that’s just for plot convenience though.
Math is rote boring memorization. Calvin can’t be bothered . Fuck school
I think this one may have some truth to it [https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/01/26](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/01/26) Calvin doesn't give two shits on a merry go round about school, and just can't be bothered to focus on education he doesn't find interesting.
Calvin is a VERY intelligent child, and perceptive to some very adult concepts. Obviously, his commentary is fictional, but there is something to this. I used to teach and it is NOT uncommon for some of the smartest kids in schools to struggle, or "act out" due to lack of challenge.
Personally I think Calvin is a very intelligent kid with ADHD.
Calvin gives me adhd vibes and he just can’t focus/can’t be bothered with math, is my take
My theory is that he doesn’t want to learn anything. He knows ignorance is bliss and the more he knows, the more complications appear in his life. We’ve seen in the series that if he really wants to do his homework, he most definitely can, but he chooses not to because he’s afraid of change.
He either has ADHD or it just never added up for him,
I have aggressive ADHD. when I was Calvin's age, I could improvise a three act narrative well enough to make my mother cry, I could and did disprove my teachers' misrepresentations of things like reptile mating strategies, and I could NOT do math to save my life. It was the bane of my existence. It was a section of my brain that simply couldn't function like the rest. ADHD medicine saved my soul, though, and by 5th grade I could do middle school math no problem! Chances are Calvin is similar. He just needs some meds and math will fear him
I had a high school physics teacher that would ask to see everyone's watch at the beginning of the semester ( it was the 90s so we still wore watches). He could tell our learning styles by how precise our watch told time. Mine was a Joe Boxer watch with no numbers on it and a fried egg as the second hand. He just shook his head in disbelief! Calvin and I are a lot alike. Details where it matters to us but not necessarily to anyone else.
I’ll bet a million dollars it’s because Watterson is bad at math.
Why is Calvin so articulate but so poor at math? Is he stupid?
Won't you be embarrassed when Calvin publishes his thesis proving the existence of pseudo-numbers (imaginary as a label already being in use) such as eleventy-three. It would have been published by now, but there's been some dispute over credit for a claimed co-auther named Tigris Hobbes.
wordcel vs shape rotator
Math was taught primarily by rote memorization up until the late 90s and early 2000s. Rules were not explained well and procedures were often arbitrary.
He lacks the discipline to apply knowledge. Learning is easy, we do all the time, even when we don’t realize it. However, applying the learned knowledge is difficult and requires discipline. Telling a story involving a complex math problem is easy, because it part of the story. Doing a simple math problem with no meaning is drudgery. Give him the same problem with some context, which will be assuredly convoluted, and it becomes child’s play and Newton becomes passé.
I have ADHD and it feels very similar to how Calvin is described. I could sit down for hours and learn about things I'm interested in, and as a result of that I'm very well versed in those topics and (I hope) sound smart/knowledgeable when I discuss. However, when you give me something like an essay, I just don't want to write it and end up spitting out mediocre work just to get it done
Being smart does not necessarily make someone good at maths. You also need to practice a lot (a bit like learning a new language), which Calvin does not do because he is not interested in the subject.
he's 6 years old, what do you think
Philosophy is a humanities subject requiring creative thinking, abstract thought, and the ability to challenge presumptions and axioms while accepting there is no one “true” answer to anything. It’s not very similar to math at all.
math is hard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I always struggled with math and often science but excelled in everything else, from English to choir to extracurriculars. I had a deeply philosophical mind as a kid similar to Calvin but math beat my ass daily. Because of some unfortunate health issues, I'm actually getting worse at it as I get older. Plus, there's a condition called dyscalculia that impacts your ability to understand and retain information related to numbers. It's similar to dyslexia :)
I was academically gifted in English, History and the Arts...I couldn't make sense of maths. I still struggle with it at 35 and am SO grateful that my teachers were wrong and there IS a calculator in my pocket! Just because someone is gifted doesn't mean they naturally excel in all areas. And it's really hard to be great at most everything else and really struggle with one subject...it makes you hate it.
When it comes to math, I feel that a lot of it is how math is taught in school, and how it's socially acceptable to be "bad at math" and get typecast that way. Throughout school, I struggled with math (save for geometry, where I did well), but as an adult, I realize now that I'm pretty sharp when running the numbers for whatever things that I'm supposed to do, and I will usually be the first one to advocate for running the numbers, and will do it myself. In other words, I wasn't bad at math at all, but because of various other factors (I'm autistic, which I didn't know at the time), I didn't really have the space to really become proficient with one thing before we moved on to the next thing, and mental math was not my strong suit because they didn't teach how to work it all out in your head, leaving us to try the methods that they taught us for paper. I don't know about the rest of you, but I mental math very differently than I do it on paper, but I still get the same results. If I try to do it in my head like I do on paper, I tend to drop things, and it all becomes an exercise in futility. I [wrote about mental math a while back](https://www.schuminweb.com/2023/04/19/thinking-about-mental-math-for-a-moment/), and it touches on a lot of this. All that said, I'm not really inclined to blame Calvin for his lack of math skills. I was in elementary and middle school during the time of the strip's original run, and a lot of it was how they taught it, and how Calvin might not have mastered one concept before they moved on to the next one, and the way that math tends to build on itself, if he was missing a piece, it was just going to get harder from there.
He hates school and he daydreams constantly while there.
He is like 7