New Delhi: A silent, but widespread epidemic in modern society is the unnatural fear of maths, dubbed ‘maths anxiety‘. The society-wide aversion to maths starts from a young age, and persists throughout life. One of the problems here is that students are made to learn techniques and solutions, with students rarely experiencing the pleasure of solving something on their own. The hesitation, fear and doubt towards the subject as students can extend to the entire lifetimes, with adults preferring accounts when confronted with having to work out their taxes. The fear of maths is pervasive, and education, especially in an engaging and interesting way can help address this issue to a great extent.
Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, Founder and CEO of Bhanzu, an education platform that aims to make maths more interesting and accessible to students says, “Math anxiety slowly closes doors without students even realising it. In India, many schools offer subject choices after Grade 10. Students who are afraid of math usually take the non-math option — like science without math, commerce without math, or humanities. That’s not wrong, but the problem is, many of them don’t choose these subjects because they love them. They choose them to escape math. Then in college, again, they avoid degrees that involve numbers. This means they also lose out on careers in data, finance, tech, or anything number-related. That fear becomes a filter that keeps shrinking opportunities that they might have.”
Cultural attitudes towards maths
Cultural factors also play a role in making maths appear scarier than it is. Prakash explains, “There’s one thing that happens in almost every Indian household. When the report card comes, the first subject parents look at is math. If the score is low, panic begins. Tuitions are arranged, extra books are bought. But this doesn’t happen for most other subjects. We also often hear things like ‘math is tough but important’. Children are enrolled to coaching classes for math but no other subject. They are also encouraged by their parents to solve tons of worksheets and solve as many questions as they can to do better in the exam. Similar conversations do not generally happen for other subjects. All this sends a signal that math is somehow a bigger and scarier subject than the rest. This pressure builds up quietly and makes the child feel math is something to fear or ‘conquer.’”