School are Discouraging Math Skills: A letter to the Minister of Education by Ethan Kharitonov.
Dear Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education:
I would like to bring it to your attention that Ontario math curriculum and teaching strategies are preventing student success. Most students between grades 1 and 12 dislike math. In the 2017-2018 EQAO only 49 percent of Grade 6 students met the standard, and the average in my last math class was 72 percent. I believe that the problem is not with math itself, but the way math is taught in school.
The prestige of a country is measured by its scientific progress and technological advancements. All sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) heavily depend on math. And even psychology and sociology require good knowledge of statistics, which is a branch of math. Discouraging students from pursuing the field could cost the country dearly. Turning kids away from math shatters their potential and our potential as a nation. Good mathematical education is important even to those who do not plan to enter the STEM fields. “Certain qualities that are nurtured by mathematics are power of reasoning, creativity, abstract or spatial thinking, critical thinking, problem-solving ability and even effective communication skills.” (Guwahati University).
To prove that students dislike school math, but willing learn through other sources, I would like to mention that YouTube channels with math content get millions of views. How do they manage to keep the audience engaged? By making content relevant and challenging. Kids want to learn things that are useful and relate to their interests. For example, I enjoy software development for video games, and recently I was motivated to learn complex numbers and quaternions to describe rotation because I could use that knowledge for my hobby. The challenge gave me a feeling of self-improvement and almost elevated it to the experience of going to the gym. I believe that a big reason why students dislike school math is because it’s missing the connection to their interests. I suggest the following to remedy the problem:
- Workshops that explain how future careers depend on math such as the way game developers use the quadratic formula to check if two objects are touching each other or the way that nurses use math to calculate the right amount of medicine a patient needs.
- Allowing students with potential in math to move ahead by simply dividing the classes into groups based on skill and ability. This would enable the system to discover and develop students with potential while letting the less advanced students get the help they need and learn at their own pace.
Relevance is not the only way to make math appealing. The most liked math videos on YouTube are not only practical, but challenging. Problems that challenge the mind and feel like detective work can arouse interest because it is interesting now, not because it will be useful someday.“The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because it is beautiful.” (Poincaré). I think the following quote by Paul Lockhart conveys my point perfectly: “Just because a subject has some mundane practical use does not mean we have to make that use the focus of our teaching. It may be true that you have to be able to read in order to fill out forms at the DMV, but that’s not why we teach children to read. We teach them to read for beautiful and meaningful ideas. Not only would it be cruel to force third graders to fill out purchase orders and tax forms— it wouldn’t work! We learn things because they interest us now, not because they might be useful later.
But this is exactly what we are asking children to do with math.” (Lockhart)
I believe that if the school curriculum focused more on creative and logical thinking and problem-solving rather than memorizing and learning the steps to applying an equation, students would enjoy the course a lot more.
Another way to make math more engaging is having passionate instructors.The main reason why I enjoy watching math channels online is because the people making them are passionate about it. Early grades have one teacher that teaches all the subjects, and you cannot expect one teacher to be passionate about literature, art, history and math all at the same time. To make math seem like detective work, you need someone who sees it that way themselves. Experts say that “Emphasis should be laid on development of clear concepts in mathematics in a child, right from the primary classes,” because students make their opinion about math at a very early age. I would like to share how one dedicated teacher taught us to calculate the area of a circle. Instead of the formula, she gave us a circle and a square with side length equal to the radius of the circle. She told us to fill up the square with pebbles and then transfer the pebbles onto the circle once the square was filled. We saw that the pebbles from the square filled the circle just over 3 times. When she told us that the equation is 3.14 * r2 it almost seemed obvious to me. The bottom line is that passion is infectious.
Finally, the last thing that discourages students from math is the myth of the ‘math person’.
“Experts suggest that there’s actually no such thing as a ‘math person.’ In fact, they argue that the myth of ‘math people’ makes students more anxious about math. Mastery of mathematics is deeply satisfying but it is a reward for hard work that is not itself always pleasurable. Without the esteem for hard-won mathematical skills that is common in other cultures, the mastery is unlikely to blossom.” (qtd. in “There’s no such thing as a ‘math person.’”)
The term ‘math person’ suggests that being good at math is something that you are born with. It makes students feel helpless in trying to improve, and the term becomes justification for math illiteracy. In fact, math skills form through practice and being engaged. Besides, living in the modern world requires people to understand basic math concepts used for taxes, mortgage interest etc. For those reasons, it is important to discourage the use of the phrase.
In conclusion, if the ministry of education wants to encourage the students who have potential in math and science as well as help students develop day to day skills, I suggest that all grades have a separate teacher specifically for math, alter the curriculum to emphasize the potential benefit mathematics have to offer, shift focus from memorization to problem-solving, separate classes into groups based of mathematical ability and lastly, eradicate the ‘math person’ scapegoat and myth.
Sincerely,
Ethan Kharitonov