New Delhi: The way in which Maths is taught in schools creates an aversion to the subject, and even as adults people experience stress, fear or discomfort when dealing with calculations. This has resulted in a silent pandemic known as ‘Maths Anxiety’. Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, Founder and CEO of Bhanzu, an education platform that aims to make maths interesting and engaging for school children explains, “In my experience, math anxiety starts showing up at an early age. It begins small, like avoiding math homework, or saying ‘I’ll study it later.’” This anxiety is persistent and permeates society at a wide scale, for example we rarely see advancements in mathematics rising to the top on Google News.
Maths anxiety has become a background stress that we have all accepted to live with. There is a strong belief in the society that trigonometry and algebra are totally useless, so parents are not overly concerned even when their children do not perform well in these subjects. Then as adults, these same children struggle with converting currencies, or calculating tax. There is scope for tremendous improvement in maths education, where students are encouraged to experience the pleasure of solving problems on their own.
Common signs of fear in students
There are some tell-tale signs of fear that can be easily spotted in students. Prakash explains, “Over time, students start feeling low confidence compared to how they feel about other subjects. You can see it when a child is able to solve a basic problem written in numbers, but gets confused when the same problem is framed as a word problem. There’s hesitation, doubt, and sometimes even panic when they see a math paper. Other signs include not knowing how to even begin a problem, skipping questions without trying, or staring at the question blankly. These are not signs of laziness, they are signs of fear.”