Mathematics may be the most anxiety-provoking subject taught in
a classroom. For many adults, especially those who avoided math
in school, facing a column of numbers makes their palms sweat and
their heart race. In fact, many of today's math-anxious parents
probably learned their fear from their own parents or elementary
school teachers who also felt incompetent when it came to working
with numbers. It is a cycle that, unfortunately, can be passed on
to today's children as well. While I know of no evidence to show
that math anxiety is genetic, it clearly seems to be contagious.
But if you look at toddlers, you'll find that numbers fascinate
them. At that age, numbers offer predictability and, from that,
power. It is an attitude that all too often changes when they reach
elementary school.
Elementary school teachers usually receive far less training in
how to teach mathematics than in how to teach reading and writing.
In fact, many selected their profession at least partly because
they felt uncomfortable taking advanced college-level courses in
mathematics or the sciences. They are likely to view mathematical
ability as something they cannot expect from all children—a
strikingly different attitude than the one that they hold toward
such skills as reading and spelling.
The misconception that basic mathematical ability is innate often
leads children and their parents to respond more passively to mathematics
than to other subjects, waiting to discover whether they have a
natural talent for it. There is less incentive to work hard at it
because it feels out of their control. This leads some children
and teachers to interpret a child's initial difficulty understanding
something as an inability to master it.
The issue of math anxiety is significant for both children and
parents. Comfort with and competence at mathematics are increasingly
important for success in adulthood. Avoiding math courses severely
restricts the fields a student can study and the jobs a new college
graduate can find. Although it may seem a bit premature to worry
about such things while your child is in elementary school, it isn't.
Attitudes about mathematical competence form early. Bad experiences
in the first few grades can have a domino effect, limiting a child's
selection of courses in middle school, high school, and so forth.
Although it's sometimes assumed that girls are more anxious about
math than boys, and that students who do poorly in the subject are
more anxious than those who do well, research has shown that's not
the case. Many students who do well in math are still anxious, and
attribute their success to luck instead of knowledge and effort.
And while studies have found differences in math anxiety between
boys and girls, those differences have been slight.
One source of anxiety about mathematics can clearly be traced to
early classroom experiences. A woman I interviewed a few years ago
who teaches adults who are uncomfortable with numbers said that
she would routinely notice students who hid their hands under their
desks as soon as she asked them to do a problem out loud. Few were
conscious of the habit. When she explored further, she found that
almost all of these adults had attended parochial elementary school.
Back then, many of the nuns who taught would rap young students
on the knuckles with a ruler if they gave an incorrect answer. Unfortunately,
what the students had learned and carried with them to adulthood
was fear, not arithmetic.
HELPING OUT WITH MATH PROBLEMS
Children look to their parents for cues as to how they should respond
when they're frustrated by a math problem. The parents' attitudes
when facing their own math problems at home are often much more
important than their ability to "crunch numbers." A parent
who shows her children the process of pondering the questions, drawing
a diagram or two to clarify the problem, approximating the answer,
and then doing the calculations will help her children more than
one who does it in her head or out of sight of her children. Thought
the first approach may take longer, it teaches persistence and other
important skills. It also shows a child what may be new ways of
looking at math problems.
If your child is anxious about mathematics, here are some other
things you can do:
-
Pay attention to your own feelings about mathematics. Are
you anxious? Do you treat your child's math homework differently
than that of other subjects? Children sense their parents' attitudes
and quickly learn whether they are expected to succeed or fail.
-
All too often, the math problems children are asked to solve
in school seem irrelevant. Have you ever really needed to know
how far apart two trains are an hour and a half after they leave
the station? When was the last time you wanted to know how many
rods there are in the perimeter of a field?
If you'd like your child to practice solving problems, choose
ones that fit his interests. Calculate baseball batting averages.
Figure out how many pieces of candy he can buy for a given amount
of money. You can also show how mathematics is embedded in newspaper
stories and advertisements.
- Remember that, as with reading, success is critical to further
success. Let your child feel comfortable with each basic skill,
such as division or decimals, before moving on. Otherwise you're
setting your child up for frustration and failure.
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