Game Of Words : View Vs Counter View 1.14

Once bad at math, a person will always be bad at math.

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Modern sciences challenge our basic assumptions about various subjects, some of which have discouraged a lot of students from sticking with it.

The most popular and damaging of these assumptions has been that some people can do math and others just can’t. Advances in neuroscience are revolutionizing our approach to education, and they have various implications for the way we teach math. Parents believe it, most teachers believe it, and soon enough, the students believe it too. There has been a recent study which stated that if a student did not have a good math teacher during the fifth and sixth grade, there is a high possibility that the student would not be able to cope up with the difficulty of the subject in higher grades. Math is a subject in which a person can’t do well if he/she is not well-versed with the basics and therefore a student must have good guidance right from the elementary level.

Every child can’t do well in math .

The simple answer is that we don’t approach the subject in the right way, conceptually or philosophically. Schools continue to single out who is good at math — and who is not — at a very young age. That has to change.

Another myth I think is important to confront is this notion of a “wall” in math. According to this popular idea, you can take all the math classes you like until you hit your personal wall, and then you can’t go any further. Approximately half the people in the U.S. have a fixed mindset, and the other half have a growth mindset. More people have a fixed mindset about math than any other subject. It has been found that kids with growth mindsets achieve more. They do so because a growth mindset goes along with certain behaviors — they are more persistent and more willing to learn from mistakes.

• Gurleen Singh  1BBA-B

Counter-view:

Math uses made-up rules to create models and relationships. Textbooks rarely focus on understanding; it's mostly solving problems with fixed formulas. It saddens me that beautiful ideas get such a rote treatment. Research proves that Math is a way of thinking, and it's important to see how that thinking developed rather than only showing the result. Psychological studies point out that mindset is key to learning. Factual learning is not understanding, we must keep an open mind and delve deep into the true meaning of things and not just look at the superficial coating applied unintentionally by our mind. It's often seen that applying theories to real world phenomena helps understand the theories much better. We must realize we are capable of learning a lot more than we think we can. We must not give up easily, a characteristic quite common in humans. Therefore, a person can get better at math if he/she wants to because at the end of the day it's the mindset of the person that sets his/her limitations. Math skills are increasingly important for getting good jobs these days, so believing you can’t learn math is especially self-destructive. But, I also believe that math is a great mental monster for an unconfident individual. If we can convince you that anyone can learn math, it should be a short step to convincing you that you can learn just about anything, if you work hard enough.

While schools tend to focus on math problems around third grade, and math learning disabilities often are diagnosed by fifth 
A study found the ability to work with numbers may be something that is entirely choice-based. If you want to, you can.

• Anuj Talera

            1BBA-B