Contending with Math Phobia

The following is the expanded version of the keynote address that I had delivered at the recently held workshop on “Math Pedagogy” which was organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Institute of Mathematical Sciences (JKIMS), Srinagar to reach out to and to interact with a cross section of teachers who are engaged in teaching mathematics in the schools across the valley. The idea was to sensitise them about the ongoing crisis in the school education system which is particularly dire in respect of mathematics and which has witnessed a visible decline, including in terms of the number of students seeking admission to mathematics at almost all levels of education across India, and far more critically so in Jammu and Kashmir.

Before we begin to make sense of the reasons for the crisis and of the ways how to tackle it, the role that the currently prevailing mode of teaching of mathematics has played in precipitating the crisis warrants a detailed analysis and understanding. In this context, it ought to be made abundantly clear what exactly would meaningful teaching entail and how it impacts the quality of education. An idea of the symbiotic relationship between the two is summed up in the following words:

“Education is an on-going process, a sort of work in progress whereas teaching is the vehicle for delivery of content as part of education and hence an outcome of knowledge transfer. Further, while education is seen as a powerful enabling tool for individual empowerment, good education is the outcome of successful teaching”.

Broad reasons for the crisis

The key to understanding the genesis of the crisis has to be sought across a wide gamut of issues surrounding the crisis. However, the elephant in the room that comes across as the spoiler-in-chief is this woeful lack of motivation and zeal among our teachers, especially those teaching maths. at the school level who are underprepared, unmotivated or who haven’t learnt the material themselves enough, and with the clarity and understanding that would carry conviction with the students. It’s in the midst of such a listless, uninspiring ambiance in the classroom that the teacher is not able to share the joy and excitement of learning with the students.

Why in all of this, I have highlighted the role of teachers at the school level is because at that level, a student, however talented, is uninitiated in the enterprise of learning, and so has to be provided the enabling conditions in the classroom to learn. That would necessitate individual attention being paid by the teacher to help the student in their moments of doubt towards a better understanding of the content. To that end, the teacher would have to invest their time and effort to the extent of 80% compared to 20% on the part of the student to ensure a healthy and meaningful learning environment in the class. A similar line of reasoning would obtain in respect of the ratio involving the ‘division of labour’ between the teacher and the student at the college/university level which may be tagged at something like 50:50 and 25:75, respectively.

Here, it is important to point out why ‘math phobia’ comes across as a malady which is peculiar to mathematics and why it is not encountered in other disciplines, say physics, chemistry, life sciences, humanities and elsewhere. The reasons have to be sought in the evolution and development of mathematics over a period of hundreds of years which contrast starkly with how other intellectual disciplines have evolved over long periods of their development. The point is that in mathematics, one learns that nothing is ever wrong. In other words, if something was once true, it would continue to be true for all times to come.

I quote the following passage from a recent reference that has appeared elsewhere where the author notes that:

• “Biologists don’t really have to go back much farther than Watson/ Crick,
• Chemists don’t really have to go back much farther than Lavoisier,
• Physicists don’t really have to go back much farther than Newton,
• Astronomers don’t really have to go back much farther than Copernicus.

In truth, most people in most STEM disciplines can limit their attention to the past ten years or so, because anything before then is likely to be outdated or disproven.

On the contrary, the poor mathematician has to contend with everything that has ever been written about mathematics for the past 2000+ years, and in every culture around the world”.

Education and Teaching

It needs no uncommon intelligence to assert that if a system of education fails to achieve its main objectives in the shape of innovation, employability or research capacity among the students, the model is as good as irrelevant and useless. However, meaningful and useful education cannot be ensured in the absence of meaningful teaching. Contrary to the popular perception, teaching does not merely consist in the act of passing of information from the teacher to the student, or in the inanity of covering the syllabus, good teaching entails the act of ‘uncovering’ the syllabus with a view to unravel the larger picture and to reveal “what is actually going on”.

Teaching as an enabler of understanding

In order for the teacher to be able to deliver on the above requirements, he is supposed to know more than he has to teach in the class and that he is required to have absorbed the content with absolute clarity and comprehension before sharing it with the students. Only in such circumstances would it be possible for the teacher to instil conceptual understanding of the material in the minds of the student, especially if it involves the teaching of mathematics. Again, unlike in other subjects, a student in maths class would stand to suffer considerably if he were to bunk the class without caring to catch up to learn the material that was taught the previous day in the class before he shows up in the next class.

On the other hand, one knows that with an unprecedented surge in content as is now available at the push of a button, the need has never been greater to make the right choices in accessing the content. Much as the modern computer technology has enormously facilitated the gathering and transmission of content with that much ease and speed, the student feels tempted to take a recourse to the AI and related technology to access the readily available content including the solutions to problems that, in the absence of technology, they would have strived hard to accomplish the task on their own. The point is that the assimilation and comprehension of content is an entirely different ball game where technology just cannot be hoped to help much-beyond a point. After all, learning involves a great deal of thinking, reflection and hard work.

It is here that the role played by a teacher becomes vital, which entails an honest and intellectual engagement of the teacher with the student. Teaching in its quintessential sense is about the ability to share the joy of learning and knowledge on the one hand and about the possibility of allowing the student access to the world of beautiful and meaningful ideas, on the other. Acquiring and creating knowledge of the hitherto unknown is one of the greatest quests of an evolved and cultivated human mind, a virtue that a good teacher would strive to foster among their students and to show the door even as the student has himself to walk through it. The joy of learning is intrinsic to the inquisitive mind as is, say the joy of scaling lofty heights by the hikers or in breaking new ground in various domains of human endeavour.

The fact that the poor state of education in our midst is symptomatic of the systemic rot brings in the role of the state which cannot be overlooked. The indifference on the part of education policy makers towards teaching in our schools, colleges and universities is unconscionable that has already caused untold damage to our education system and that has resulted not only in low quality student output but has also led, at the university level, to low level, shoddy research being churned out from our educational institutions.

In this context, it is important to point out that in order to prevent further regress of education into the abyss of mediocrity, the policy makers would do well to put in place a system where the grades of the student are not looked upon as the sole determinant of their talent, or where the grades are privileged over other parameters involving the curiosity, comprehension and the appetite for learning of a student. The same policy ought to inform the selection/appointment of teachers who should be tested through a rigorous multilayered selection process in terms of their credentials to possess and excel in teaching skills. In other words, the system has to put in place a viable mechanism whereby one who is not good enough to deliver in teaching is automatically ruled out of reckoning as a faculty at the school level. Of course, similar criteria would also need to be evolved to apply in the case of selection of teachers at the college/university level where the applicant would be required to excel preferably in both, but certainly in at least either of these requirements.

Finally, in partial achievement of the above mentioned goals, I draw comfort from the realization that the workshop was a successful event that kindled the hope that those who had turned up to participate in the event would return wiser and richer in terms of the ideas that were talked about during the course of the event.

1. M. A. Sofi, Professor Emeritus,

Kashmir University, Srinagar