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posted by mrpg on Monday November 05 2018, @02:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the pi≈3 dept.

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Think you're bad at math? You may suffer from 'math trauma'

I teach people how to teach math, and I've been working in this field for 30 years. Across those decades, I've met many people who suffer from varying degrees of math trauma – a form of debilitating mental shutdown when it comes to doing mathematics.

When people share their stories with me, there are common themes. These include someone telling them they were "not good at math," panicking over timed math tests, or getting stuck on some math topic and struggling to move past it. The topics can be as broad as fractions or an entire class, such as Algebra or Geometry.

[...] One of the biggest challenges U.S. math educators face is helping the large number of elementary teachers who are dealing with math trauma. Imagine being tasked with teaching children mathematics when it is one of your greatest personal fears.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @02:49AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @02:49AM (#757827)

    In my experience, there's a number of things that happen. But, this is one of the big ones. A refusal to try unless absolutely certain that you're on the right track. It's very, very difficult to learn anything if you refuse to try unless you've already got the answer.

    This is one of the reasons why I advocate against having too many tutors available for the students. If they don't try before getting help, then there's no way of knowing if they could do it on their own. And there's no way of developing any sort of self-confidence as you only build that via either succeeding or handling failure gracefully. Neither of which happen if you've got support right there immediately on demand.

    I'm not sure who it is that gives students the idea that it's possible to advance in math without making any mistakes. Sometimes you can't reasonably determine the appropriate method without first trying a few things because either the rule that would tell you what to do doesn't exist, or more commonly, is more complicated than just taking a few educated stabs.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @03:26AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @03:26AM (#757837)

    I'm not sure who it is that gives students the idea that it's possible to advance in math without making any mistakes.

    Idiot parents who themselves have math trauma and think rote memorization can get one through algebra.

    It can't.

    And I wish somebody would tell the people always going "I wanna be a programmer" that if you barely passed algebra, chances are that you will never be a programmer, no matter how much you blame half the planet's population. In the next life you'll realize how much of a childish jackass you were being with that approach.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday November 05 2018, @03:18PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 05 2018, @03:18PM (#757998) Homepage Journal

      Except that the procedural intuition you build up doing things in the real world can carry you far enough to gain confidence and bypass the blocks you set yourself up with in algebra.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @11:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @11:00PM (#758254)

      Can you cook? You can be a programmer. What else a recipe?
      Do you knit? You can be a programmer. What else is pattern?

      Remember the first programs where punched metal plates, strung together in a loop for the loom.

      Now, will write code in less than 2k and use it pilot a spaceship to moon? Maybe not. But just like math, there are many different skill levels that required for the many facets of the business.

      Go watch "Hidden Figures".

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @10:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @10:22AM (#757916)

    This applies to much more than math.