Mathematics has been part of any education curriculum, in one way or another, a student will always cross path with Mathematics, be it as a subject or a chosen discipline. But experience has taught us that learning mathematics has never been a priority of majority students. The high rate of failure in mathematics of mathematics majors as well as Engineering students confirms this fact. Perhaps the motivation and encouragement given to learn mathematics are not sufficient.
Although mathematics is considered the most prestigious subject in the school curriculum at any level, it continues to be a subject taught more for enabling students to get through the examinations only. It is taught in an authoritarian fashion. There is least worry about motivation. Mathematics is one subject where the gap between the intended and the implemented objectives is wide. As a consequence, mathematics is considered the most difficult subject and is considered as a useless, boring and hard subject.
Part of the reason why mathematics puzzles the majority of persons is that it is hard for them to decide what kind of thing mathematics is. Is it a science? Is it an art? Is it a language? In fact mathematics is all three. Among all the existing sciences, it is the science which is least restricted to any one particular area of the world, real or imagined. It is hard to say all that mathematics is. The famous philosopher Bertrand Russell said that pure mathematics is something which we can talk about without understanding what it is.
Mathematics contains ideas that can be, and deserve to be, communicated to a wider public. But mathematicians claim that math is not a spectator sport. You cannot understand math, or enjoy it, without doing it. A mathematician who tries to communicate his subject to the layman soon finds himself in trouble because if he sticks to the truth he cannot communicate, and when he tries to communicate, he strays from the truth. Talking without being understood is pointless, lying is painful, so most often mathematicians abandon the attempt to communicate mathematics to others.
However, as educators, we are duty bound to explain Mathematics to every student of today. Much as we want to give up and select those only that loves numbers and formulas, the challenge remains, that the portion of student population that needs guidance on Mathematics is always bigger thus of bigger importance as well.
If formulas in mathematics and other physical sciences are considered weapons of intimidation by others, cannot they be replaced by common language? But to explain the mathematical formulas in details, words are often clumsy and sometimes ambiguous.
Pushpa Raj Adhikary, Mathematician in the Interdisciplinary Thoughts of Ku University, attempts to answer the long overdue question of whether Mathematics is hard or exciting. Let us rundown some of his reasons and come up with our own conclusion.
“Is mathematics exciting?”.
Mathematical methods are so popularly used because it has the ability to reduce complex problems into a set of simple step-by-step solutions. In the absence of such a technique, problem solving would mostly be a trial and error or a subjective matter.
We are living in the greatest age of mathematics ever seen. Mathematics started being more abstract since the beginning of twentieth century and many feared whether mathematicians would be working on silly intellectual exercise. Since World War II, it has became a single unified discipline having profound influence in the development of human civilization. So, learning and creating mathematics is a worthwhile way to spend life.
“Is mathematics hard?
Unfortunately most people confess that they are not good at mathematics. You may not find a single good mathematician who claims that mathematics is easy for him or her. While mathematics is intensely enjoyable, it also requires hard work and discipline. The truth is that one should be driven to study mathematics and it is literally difficult to convince that they could shine in this discipline. But the fact is: it is exciting. The earlier frustration of learning mathematics should not deter anyone in the thrills of learning and creating new mathematics. Mathematicians are the only people who, by their mathematics, help to create new technologies and knowledge to enhance human civilization further.
On a personal note, Mathematics is both exciting and difficult. As something difficult is also the same as being exciting. What makes Mathematics difficult is arriving at the correct answer using a standard and structured sets of formulas and ways to solve it, which in return is an exciting part of being a Mathematician. Both exciting and hard is a concept born in our minds, what must be changed is the mindset of every student that Mathematics is a dead end.
Mathematics is like any subject in the academe, if one is able to find its beauty and importance, students will devote their time and focus in solving the most basic problem up to the most complicated problem created.
By: Ariel G. Borja | TEACHER III | LIMAY NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL | LIMAY, BATAAN
