The unfortunate reality of mathematics education, is that many students in the classrooms come up with the idea that they can’t do it. “I just don’t have a math brain like you,” is a common comment I’ve received.
If this were a true statement it would be rather unfortunate, for then there would be just about nothing this person could do in life. “The demands of society require much more of secondary school mathematics students than merely being able to compute the total of a grocery bill … (Posamentier et al. 2).” If the demands are much more, and everyone was walking around without this “math brain,” there would be no one but the mathematicians, and mathematics teachers (and maybe some Science people too) who could meet the demands of daily living.
Fortunately, this statement is not true, but rather the acceptance of “failure with misdirected pride [Posamentier et al. 1].” Winston Churchill has said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” And I say that it is about time we have some more optimistic students running around. This must come from optimistic teachers.
I’ve only sat through five days of my College Geometry course, and already I’m daunted by the task of needing to have proofs at the ready, for concepts I’ve known since my own high school years. Proofs are the hinge of mathematics – the statements of why things work the way they do. It is the creation of proofs that mathematicians spend their lives seeking to discover, and then go on to prove more ideas when one is done. But sitting at my desk, staring at the task, “Show that for any triangle ABC, even if B or C is an obtuse angle, a=bcosC+cCosB,” I’m left saying to myself,” I can’t do it. I’ve spent hours on this one question already, and I know the answer will be given to me when I get into class on Wednesday, so now I’m at the crossroads of wanting to take a break, and wait for the answer to be given, or keep pushing on through.
And then my mother shared that above quote by Churchill. Conviction.
I am an optimist, and I know I can do this math. I’ve trudged myself through mathematics courses, and when I wasn’t sure if I’d be pulled under or not, I emerged victorious after hours of studying and prep time. I will be a teacher who inspires her students to keep working at the problems, even when they’re convinced that they can’t do it. In the hardship of understanding, there is an opportunity to learn and understand – with disequilibrium comes learning as, Piaget suggests. How can I portray my belief in this, if I myself do not act upon it?
As a side note, with a little extra encouragement, I have been able to see develop the proof for the above statement, it is simple but beautiful, as proofs usually are.
My earliest memory of school education is math-related; I never learned the multiplication tables! Now, as someone “math-phobic” (and who’s regretting now not having learned more), I wish I had heard before the idea that math isn’t just a subject, but actually more an attitude towards life.