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Cope!

No more number fear!

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Being scared by Maths is quite common. Help your tot subtract the insecurity, add some ability and multiply the fun...Words Pallavi Bhattacharya

‘Two jiror arr jiroTwo wunja twoTwo tuja phorTwo thriza shix’

What was the meaning of this rhyme? First-grader Vikram was clueless! He had to learn

by heart many of these rhymes, which were actually multiplication tables very badly pronounced. His Maths teacher in school stood with a wooden ruler in hand and when she commenced the dodging sessions (asking the class to solve randomly asked multiplication sums) he could never answer. He would be hit hard on his palm with the ruler and was ordered to stand on his desk, holding his ears. He would repeatedly get detention in his class.

The situation at home was equally nightmarish. His paternal cousin Anirban, who was as old as him, would repeatedly win Maths Olympiads. His aunt and uncle would post photographs of their bespectacled, obese and nerdy son with oiled hair wearing medals on Facebook, which would go on to win many likes. Anirban’s mother also went on to scan his son’s Maths worksheets and report cards and post them on communities for mothers on Facebook.

His parents thought that the way to discipline him was to punish and humiliate him. His mum said, “I will give you 10 sums and your cousin the same sums. I want you to be embarrassed when he solves all sums in a jiffy and you will go on staring at the paper like a dud and biting your pencil. I hope that makes you pull your socks up, lazy boy.” That simply worsened the situation.

Vikram’s maternal uncle Tushar came to stay with them and told his parents,

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confidently, “Just give me two to three months during which you won’t teach Vikram and neither call Anirban for Maths competitions. I will take his responsibility and he will grow to love Maths.”

Tushar said, “When I was a child I read a fictional story about a class which was horrible at Maths. They could add two and two, but when they would have to add maybe six and three, they were simply at a loss. The fault was that of their teacher. He simply didn’t know how to make the lessons simple and interesting. So, he came up with the idea of infusing fun and games to make the lessons entertaining. He invented a colourful bubble mix. Each bubble had a number on it. He told his students that all that they would have to do is blow

bubbles all day. By doing so, the children got to love numbers and in turn Maths. One fine day, all the colourful bubbles blended together to make a rainbow. Simultaneously, each one of the kids became a genius at Maths.”

Vikram would love to count birds’ nests on his way to school. His mum always told him, “Loser boy, Anirban solves complicated sums while going to

Psychologist Chrisann Almeida

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school.” Tushar said, “No comparisons to his cousin please. In a week’s time, I will take advantage of this nest-counting hobby of his to make him start to like Maths and within a month or two he will be an expert at multiplication tables.” Instead of aiming to make his nephew memorise tables without understanding them; he explained how addition was made simpler by making one familiar with multiplication tables. He made bundles with match sticks to help him understand the fundamentals of multiplication. He quizzed Vikram while he counted nests, “If each nest has five eggs, how many eggs will there be in six nests?” If he got answers wrong, he would never lose his temper but patiently explain to him how he could calculate the correct answer. His nephew got to learn his tables till 12 in three months; while calculating the number of nests, adult birds, fledglings, eggs, feathers, straw to build nests, worms to feed baby birds, incubation period of egg hatching and days for baby birds to grow up. Tushar, who was also a musician, added his own music to the tables, which made them fun for Vikram.

What Vikram’s school teacher would call problem sums, Tushar renamed story sums. He would make hilarious and innovative stories, which Vikram looked forward to solving. In fact, he begged for more of those sums!

His school teacher, simply couldn’t explain to him what the signs < and > meant in Maths terminology; yet he was expected to solve sums with them. Tushar explained, “Think of < as the gaping mouth of a hungry crocodile. His open mouth will surely be turned towards the greater number of things

that he can gobble; which is why < will point towards 10 and not five.”To learn bill sums, Tushar took him to shopping expeditions. In the process he learned about weights and measures too. He mastered the concept of rupees, paisa and decimals. “When I was a child, I watched a kids’ film in which a car which cost Rs 1,00,000 was sold at Rs 1,000. This was because someone had swatted a fly which resulted in a stain that looked like a decimal point right after the first two zeroes, making Rs 1,00,000 Rs 1000.00 (Rs 1000 and 0 paisa only). This is why decimal dots need to be inserted correctly,” explained Tushar.

He introduced division to his nephew with the question, “You weigh 20kgs and Anirban weighs 40kgs. So how many Vikrams will make one Anirban?” While going on long drives, he would quiz Vikram as to how long he had travelled, how much of distance was left, what the speed should be etc. He even acquainted him with relative speed. For instance, in how much time two trains would cross one another. Instead of making him memorise which months had 31 days, he showed him a simpler method of ascertaining the days of the month by counting on his knuckles.

Manisha Panchal with Heer

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Vikram loved to draw but his mother mocked him saying that he should study instead. Tushar encouraged him to sketch and in the process taught him about shapes including parallelograms, spheres, cylinders, pentagons, hexagons, octagons, etc. He then introduced him to graphs.

Why did Tushar succeed when Vikram’s Maths teacher and parents had failed? Not only did he display affection and patience while teaching him but he taught him through fun and games. Actually, Vikram was doing Maths 24x7 with Tushar. The same boy would tremble with fear even while doing Maths for a minute with his parents and teacher, who believed in instilling fear in him. His uncle infused Maths in his day-to-day activities like grocery shopping, cooking, sewing, woodwork, time, distance, etc.

Vikram’s mother would intentionally embarrass him by counting the number

of zeroes he had scored in Maths. Tushar explained to him instead that as he improved in Maths, the very zero which saddened him would combine with other digits to make him proud. That indeed happened when Vikram scored 100 out of 100 in Maths. His uncle explained to him the intriguing concept of zero and infinity using Maths theories and simple philosophic explanations too. He told him stories regarding the discovery of Maths principles and the tales of world-famous mathematicians.When Anirban was invited to their house again, it was found that he was unable to calculate what a quarter of a quarter was. Vikram, on the other hand, broke one block from a chocolate bar which contained sixteen blocks and said, “This is the quarter of a quarter.” Anirban, was used to make use of rote memory instead of thinking and reasoning to do Maths, unlike Vikram.

The day came when Vikram won the Maths Olympiad. Tushar, however, dissuaded his parents from posting his photograph with a medal on Facebook saying, “Let us not show off. Also, this puts pressure on kids to excel every time. I wonder whether even if one of these whizkids will go on to make inventions or make India proud later, as most of the so-called Maths geniuses in India simply fade away into oblivion. Instead, let him have pure fun doing sums and better his originality in the process.”

Why kids are phobic about MathsWhy do many children dread Maths? Gaurav Tekriwal, President of the Vedic Maths Forum of India, explains, “That’s because Maths is so perfect. 2+2 has to be 4 and not 5 or 6. That’s what scares the students. In other subjects like English you don’t have to be so perfect.

Richa Sinha with Prashasti

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The second reason for it is lack of good teachers. Teachers through constant corporal punishments and memory based learning scare off the child from a junior class itself. Later on, this very fear becomes a phobia which leads to the student dropping Mathematics in higher classes.”

Chrisann Almeida, psychologist from Mumbai, points out that though the dread for Maths has not been classified as a mental illness, it is a real phobia, “Whereas Maths phobia has not made its way into the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) as an official mental illness, it affects both kids and adults. Current research shows that the portions of the brain troubled by Maths anxiety is the same part that responds to fearful situations, like seeing a spider or snake. So it’s a genuine fear.”

Richa Sinha, a 31-year-old home-maker from Hyderabad, mum to Prashasti, comes up with a variety of reasons why children may fear Maths, “Most of us look at Maths as a subject which is too formal. This negative repute of looking at Maths as a formal subject, makes it dry and utilitarian to children. Often, assigning a variety of negative adjectives like ‘dry; ‘boring’, ‘difficult’ etc to describe Maths in general, may make kids further dislike the subject.”

She explains why analogies play a role in liking or hating Maths, “Analogies play to the right brain and they enable understanding in the very first exposure of any concept in any field. So, most students can get it in the first exposure without memorisation and without stress. So, the absence of analogies means the students are confined to

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using half the brain and usually it is the wrong half. Since there is almost no brain switching from one side to another, the result is negative brain instruction and all this produces a negative fear to Maths. Thus lack of analogies results in Maths phobia.”

She also explains why kids suffering from Dyscalculia hate the subject, “Apart from all the above-mentioned reasons, there is a learning disorder which is termed as Dyscalculia, that afflicts about six per cent of the population. For such people, distinguishing between the bigger of two numbers could be difficult. They can learn to count but they cannot tell that 9 is bigger than 7.”

Manisha Panchal, 30-year-old home-maker from Thane, mum to Heer, four, is of the opinion, “Small children may get confused between numbers and mathematical methods like addition and subtraction due to which they may get scared when they don’t get sums right. When they can’t remember the numbers in sequence, they may fear they will be scolded or punished because of that.”Chrisann feels that not understanding basic Maths concepts just worsens the situation in the long run and at times parents may be to blame as well, “Missing a concept or not comprehending fundamental concepts, which leads to what I refer to as cascading ignorance as Maths concepts actually are constructed on one other, may make one petrified of the subject. Also, parental reactions to Maths, if they are continuously negative about the subject in the presence of a child. This is a double disadvantage because parents who are weak at Maths frequently communicate (maybe unknowingly) their dislike of the subject and this compounds the problem. Parents

who are good at Maths may encourage mathematical related activity with their kids but can also be disappointed if their kids aren’t as good as they expect, which can contribute to the dislike of the subject.”

What you can doRicha suggest that Maths is made fun for kids to help them overcome the phobia, “Many games are based on Maths concepts. Young children enjoy cartoons and jokes which can be used to build up the concepts. Most children will master mathematical skills and concepts more readily if they are presented first in concrete pictorial and symbols.”

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Manisha seconds Richa, “Maths should be taught in such a manner that kids while doing it feel like that they are playing with numbers, using techniques which make them feel comfortable.” Chrisann cites the example of an online portal which you may refer to while teaching your kids. “The abstract notions of Maths are hard for kids to grasp. There are a host of websites with games designed to help with particular Maths concepts. www.mathisfun.com for example helps kids see a different side to Maths,” she says.

Gaurav feels that learning Vedic Maths can boost a child’s confidence in the subject, “In Vedic Mathematics, the

mental one-line formulas are such that it has an inbuilt system of series of checks. The student can’t go wrong. Failure is not an option in Vedic Mathematics. Hence Vedic Mathematics helps to boost the confidence of the student as success leads to success and this brings out the true potential of the student. Vedic Mathematics has been founded by Jagadguru Swami Bharti Krishna Teerthaji Maharaja who was the Sankaracharya of Puri.”

Finally, if your child is still not strong in Maths after having done all that is been mentioned in this article; please don’t delve into despair, as long as your child is getting pass marks in the subject. Every child is not good at every subject. Maybe, your child will excel at some other subject or another sphere of life. It is better that your child grows up as a good human being instead of a whizkid without any values and morals. P&C