Interacting with people in general, teaching Mathematics in particular, I came to
the conclusion ⇒ few people like Mathematics.
Among them, there are those that:
- dislike + don’t know it;
- like it ± (have the knowledge just enough to manage their daily needs);
- hate it;
- have trauma.
While teaching, I made my own statistic. (I didn’t have the opportunity to compare
the results with other teacher’s)
In my experience,
≈10% of the students arrived in my classes ready to enjoy studying the subject.
For them it was easy => They liked it => they liked “me”.
As well, 10% hated the matter and myself, in the same way.
The other 80% were my special target ⇒ I would try to help them to love math.
Usually, students that didn’t like Mathematics would ask (and complain) about
why they had to study it. Would they use that specific subject?
∴, every beginning of the year I would dedicate time to show the students
why Math is useful, important for everybody to learn.
In my 5th year as a teacher, I had an idea = instead of give them reasons, I
would set a homework, as a project, in which they had 3 items to answer:
a) Is it important to learn Mathematics?
b) Give examples of jobs in which you will need the math knowledge.
c) Give 3 examples of jobs in which you won’t need math knowledge at all.
This project was given to all my students (age from 10 to 15 years old).
The results were so interesting and positive that I even thought of making a book.
One day, one of the students approached me with the question =
“Teacher, I have asked everybody, searched a lot, but I can find 0 jobs that don’t
require the math knowledge.”
No need to say what it made me feel!!!!!