The most unpopular thing I ever admitted? I loved math!

Math has a PR problem, not a numbers problem, it's time we stopped treating Math like the villain

As a student, I loved math. Yet I often shied away from saying this in public, lest my peers detest me. Who loves algebra, trigonometry, and geometry? “Me,” the isosceles-triangle formula lover wanted to shout out. But the consensus in the classroom, at school, in the neighborhood, and beyond was to hate the subject, so I stayed quiet.

You could score well in math, even if you got the answer incorrect. Say, you are asked to calculate the age of a son and father based on some assumptions. You are doing it right, but somehow in the end the age of the son turns out to be more than that of the father. Even if the answer is incorrect, if you followed the right steps in the calculations, you could score! Now, that in my head was a jackpot. And it is something I struggled hard to explain to my friends. Besides, I did enjoy studying the subject.

The thought of math as the most hated subject always made me uncomfortable. Why do a lot of people hate the subject? Who tells our children to dislike or like a subject? I put forth the question to young minds.

The answers I received were amusing and interesting, to say the least. ‘It’s cool to say that you hate math.’ ‘Only nerds are good at math, and nobody wants to be labeled as one.’ ‘When I grow up, I will drive from destination A to destination B, or fly, or be on board a ship. Why do I need to know the km/h or the difference between upstream/downstream?’ ‘Why am I being taught the subject, which seems to be irrelevant in real-life situations?’

Fair enough. In retrospect, I must confess that I too didn’t know ‘what’ I could become after studying math at college.

Yet, parents continue to drive their kids to extra coaching classes in the subject. A bad grade in math is looked down upon. But come to think of it, what really drives kids away from the subject? The next time your child says they don’t like the subject, probe to find the reason. Is it hard to study? Do they not like the teacher? Are they made to feel silly when they get a simple problem wrong? Or is it just because we closed our minds to the subject generations ago?

Some time ago, I met a math teacher from Finland with 30 years of experience. Maarit Rossi, one of the world’s top ten teachers, was in Dubai as one of the judges for the Global Teacher Prize Competition 2017. In 2016, she was among the top ten finalists in the competition. She was cheerful and warm. “I spent the first 10 years of my career teaching (math) like other teachers — just like I was taught. Then it hit me — the children were not liking or learning math because we were not teaching them well,” she smiled. She’s now dedicated her life to fixing this problem. I, of course, interviewed her; more on that later.

She reminded me of my math teacher in Grade 11. She was good, helped me discover the logic of problem-solving, and made me even more addicted to the subject. I wasn’t a nerd, but a true-blue back- bencher. Yet, I was good at math, and it could be because of the teachers I’ve had. They kept my interest in the subject alive. In fact, at one point I even wanted to pursue the subject further in college. Math (Hons) sounded good. It’s altogether a different story that I ended up as a writer — finding my calling in words rather than numbers. But I studied Commerce and graduated first class in B.Com (H), then went on to study journalism and English Literature.

But the point is, we can make math cool and fun to learn. We can spark their interest in the subject in creative ways. Movies, for instance, can be a good way. There are some recent ones on the lives of different mathematicians: Super 30 (a Bollywood film based on mathematician Anand Kumar), The Man Who Knew Infinity (a Hollywood film based on mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan), and the  Shakuntala Devi: Human Computer, starring Bollywood actress Vidya Balan.

There are plenty of other ways, too. The first step, however, is to drive away the fear of the subject. Let’s talk to our children and do that.

(This piece was first published in Khaleej Times)