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Mathematics and Life 79 You know maths 1

 You know maths 1


Background As promised in the recent post, I am working on a new way to bring mathematics closer to people's lives. Make all realise You Know Maths. Moreover, I want all to specially encourage their kids, specially the daughters to develop an early appreciation for maths concepts, processes - even if they do not score well on tests.


What does it mean to know maths ? I cannot stop myself from repeatedly asking this question as the answer would define the contours of mathematics education. Some non technical, public related questions are 


  • What maths to teach ?

  • How to teach maths ?

  • What to expect as the outcome ?

  • Whom you call being good at maths ?

  • What you do with those not so good at maths ? 

  • How can we make maths teaching - learning of maths more interesting ?

  • Why are children scared of maths ? 


When we look at the general perception about mathematics, the state of affairs in schools, the edutech company ventures, parental expectations from kids about their mathematical abilities, the focus seems to be on enhancing computational speed, teaching skills to enhance speed. The observation also coincides with my own 35+ years of mathematics classroom teaching or active management of teaching, research. 


All the highly prestigious selection exams from NCERT Talent search to JEE, IIM entrance and everywhere else too, the emphasis is moving towards getting indicators, estimates, pointers of the answers rather than the exact answers. Similarly, there is increasing emphasise in questions on understanding, using, exhibiting, knowledge of concept interconnectedness. One question, for example, connects concepts of trigonometry, geometry, algebraic expressions. Without knowing all the relevant interconnectedness, you cannot solve it correctly that too in the stipulated time. It may be a surprise for many readers to know that a 99 percentile in Quants in CAT, may actually be 29/100 as the highest was 30/100. 


In work life also we find managers avoiding, struggling and even fearing to handle data. They avoid reading, interpreting data driven reports and rely on technicians or the report making agencies to interpret it for them. The scene is scary in the bio sciences research front where people took bio to leave maths 😀 and from Bio Assay to every single step you need to tabulate, compute, analyse, interpret data.


Based on my long time formal exposure to the field, Ph. D. Education 1997, coupled with tacit knowledge of classroom teaching, curriculum planning, handling National Project on Teacher Education, I see some of the major causes of problems in mathematics education as - 


  • Too many expectations from kids resulting in reprimand, early fear, hatred towards maths.

  • Public insults on poor scores in maths

  • Forcing kids to join mindless computation skill coachings

  • Comparing kids on maths scores

  • Treating maths just a computational tool

  • Not connecting maths to life, experiences of kids

  • General perception that maths is a tough subject


Next time we will see how You Know Maths, the posts I soon plan to launch 4 pm everyday, will help resolve at least some issues.


Dr Prakash Moghe

Beyond Abacus 

8085906062, 7489447223

drpnmoghe@gmail.com



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