I´m Just Not a Maths Person...

If I had a dollar, a loonie, a pound...even a bolivar for every time I heard the title of this post, I would be a lot closer to owning my sea side dream home.  I get it, and if you teach maths, you get it too.  Most people do not consider themselves Maths people, and they are proud to let you know this.  They hate maths, freak out when they have to deal with numbers, are self diagnosed with dyscalculia, or even physically shudder at the mention of the dreaded M word.  Personally, I feel this phenomenon began because of the way Maths was taught.  Traditionally a math lesson shows us a procedure and the student must follow prescriptive steps in order to reach an accurate answer.  The only answer, which is...boring.  Why you need to know the topic, where the method originated, how is knowing this helpful and in what industry might it be used?  Most of the time we fail to answer these questions and stick to the black and white "this is how it's done!" style of pedagogy instead.
 Besides, a small portion of us seem to genuinely enjoy problem solving and the satisfaction of working out steps, neatly showing our work and satisfyingly underlining our final answers.  We enjoy a sense of accomplishment because we accurately got there in the end.  It's therapeutic and really enjoyable...for me.  But as I said, I get it.  I understand why it's difficult to appreciate something that probably wasn't a highlight in your education and you will rarely use in your personal life.  After all, I don´t factorise quadratics in my spare time unless, of course, I am preparing a lesson.  As well, educators are not great at legitimately answering that age old question of why we need to know different topics, therefore, it's difficult to personally connect to something usually abstract and without context. In English class, however, it's easy to relate to the emotions, struggles, and accomplishments of characters because you have felt something similar or understand what they are going through.  That is not as easy in Mathematics and even though all Maths teachers try and convince their students that they will use Algebra in the future (especially in two weeks time when they write their exam), we still are not great at selling our subject.

As a result it is socially acceptable to hate Maths and to not be a maths person.  It´s much cooler to be well read, to understand complicated film scripts and to appreciate song lyrics than to spend your time filling in a suduko.  Very few people would proudly brag, "I struggle to read" like they do when they are letting me know their thoughts of the subject I teach, whether I asked their opinion or not.  As a result, my response to the above question has become "I teach Maths.  Everyone's favourite."

But back to the title of this post.  Many times I have met intelligent and caring parents who work tirelessly to ensure that every bit of support is given to their child.  Sometimes though, their child struggles with numbers and eventually they resort to deciding that they were not Maths people and their offspring probably aren´t either.  Likewise for the parents whose child is an excellent mathematician, but they themselves struggled, will beam when I tell them that their child is working at a high level with the same enthusiasm as I´ve told them that their child has made them a million dollars.  They are ecstatic, elated and think they´ve finally produced offspring who have beat their genetic defect.

The truth is though, allowing your child to think that they have a predisposition to be numerically dysfunctional and repeatedly drive this point home, as harmless as it may seem, is one of the most damaging things you can do for their education.  Mathematics is used in every profession and perpetuating a fear or anxiety when faced with anything logical or numerical based will affect them in their future education and careers.

Miles Kimball and Noah Smith explore this very topic in "The Myth I´m Bad at Math."  Being experienced teachers, tutors and professors of the subject they summarised a few trends in students they met and show that achievement in Maths is much more than someone's inherit ability.

'These patterns were:

1. Different kids with different levels of preparation come into a math class. Some of these kids have parents who have drilled them on math from a young age, while others never had that kind of parental input.
2. On the first few tests, the well-prepared kids get perfect scores, while the unprepared kids get only what they could figure out by winging it—maybe 80 or 85%, a solid B.
3. The unprepared kids, not realizing that the top scorers were well-prepared, assume that genetic ability was what determined the performance differences. Deciding that they “just aren’t math people,” they don’t try hard in future classes, and fall further behind.
4. The well-prepared kids, not realizing that the B students were simply unprepared, assume that they are “math people,” and work hard in the future, cementing their advantage.

Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.'  

I´ve recently enjoyed cracking a poor Mathematical self-perception with an IB student.  I´ve taught him for the past two years as he was completing his IGCSE.  He had difficulty grasping algebra and was well below the level of his classmates.  He started in year 10 failing.  In fact, he got 0% on his first exam and though gradually this changed, I could still see the fear in his eyes, the anxiety in his face when asked a question and I heard a lot of negative self talk before things started to change.  "I´m a musician.  I´m a language person.  I´m not going to study maths so I´m not worried about these marks."  Of course I kept trying to motivate him, to convince him and to remind him that the marks will allow him to get into college in order to study the subject of his choice, if nothing else.  But to be honest, I was starting to lose faith that he would ever crack algebra.  Finally, in February, two months before he wrote his exam something changed.  He started to gain confidence, he was more engaged in lessons and he began asking questions to clarify areas he was unsure of.  As a result, he raised his grade from an F to a C in two years.  I am now teaching him in Maths Studies and the difference in his attitude, work ethic and productivity is what I´m most pleased with, but of course, his achievement levels have also improved as a result of his change in attitude.  He works without me nagging, he proudly gives me a knowing nod when I look to see if he understands what I'm explaining and I EVEN got a "I actually really like Maths now".  Mental fist pump for Miss A.

Seriously though, my student´s genetic make up did not change.  He may never be top of his class in Maths but he will develop more than enough skills to take him through university and to be a competent employee, not someone who is afraid to approach numerical based tasks.  He also has a better understanding and appreciation for numbers.  By helping him improve his effort, achievements and appreciation of Maths, all of my goals as an educator have been met and this example is here to further illustrate the notion that just like all other types negative self talk, you never know what you can accomplish until you tell yourself you are capable of something.  If you are told by someone else that it's in your DNA to fail something, you will most likely see that failure through.

So parents and educators, please think carefully about the language and attitude you perpetuate when you are discussing Maths.  Instead of focusing on something that you might genuinely find difficult, focus rather on improvement, hard work, studying and goal setting with your children in order for them to truly reach their potential.  

If you are interested in their full article and the ideas which inspired this post please click on the link below.

http://m.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/The-Myth-of-Im-Bad-at-Math/280914/