Declining math scores in Canada
“Fear is the Mind Killer”
This topic may seem unimportant fact, but as a retired math/physics teacher I see this as a “red flag” of a culture in decline: massively declining Math scores among CDN students [1] .We have gone from placing in the top quarter in international test scores 20 years ago to the bottom quarter. Why? Here are my theories on an event which, in the age where technology defines how we live and who we are, are sure collapse our standard of living and transform us from a 1st world leader to 2nd world follower/copier country.
Find the Blue area
The Numbers in the Garden
Maya hated numbers.
They weren’t just confusing—they were mean. They twisted themselves into shapes she couldn’t untangle, danced away when she tried to catch them, and left her cheeks hot with embarrassment in class. Every time her teacher wrote a problem on the board, Maya’s stomach knotted like a tangled shoelace.
One rainy afternoon, she sat at the kitchen table, staring at her math homework as if it were written in another language. Her grandmother, who was tending to her potted herbs by the window, noticed.
“Come here, Maya,” Grandma said, patting the seat beside her. “Let’s take a break.”
They stepped into the small greenhouse in the backyard. The air smelled of mint and damp soil. Grandma handed Maya a packet of seeds. “We’re going to plant twelve basil seeds. How many rows should we make if we want the same number in each?”
Maya frowned. “I… I don’t know.”
“Let’s try,” Grandma said gently. They made two rows, then three, then four, counting each time. Maya’s hands moved through the soil, her mind slowly catching the rhythm. Two rows meant six seeds each. Three rows meant four seeds each. The numbers weren’t attacking her—they were helping her organize the garden.
Over the next weeks, Grandma turned every chore into a puzzle. Measuring flour for bread became fractions. Counting petals became multiplication. Slowly, the fear loosened its grip. Numbers began to feel like tools, not traps.
Months later, Maya sat in class, pencil in hand, facing a problem about dividing apples into baskets. She pictured basil seeds in neat rows, the smell of mint in the air. Her pencil moved without hesitation.
When the teacher announced she had the highest score in the class, Maya didn’t feel like she had conquered math. She felt like she had made peace with it.
And in her mind, numbers would always grow in a garden, green and gentle, waiting to be counted.
The above story says it all: fear blocks our cerebral cortex. To overcome fear you need kindness and trust with real success that is visible and reality based instead of being abstract. Fear, and thus math phobia, is a self inflicted wound – there is nobody else to blame but ourselves, not only at a personal level, but more importantly at a society wide level. In the article [1] where I read about this I found this point particularly interesting:
“Many elementary teachers today, whether they realize it or not, come into the classroom with what she calls “math anxiety,” or some kind of aversion towards the subject, often stemming from their own experience learning it in school. “Many carry that into the classroom,” she said. “They will say things like ‘This is going to be very hard’ or ‘We’re going to try something really difficult today,’ not because it really is difficult, but because they perceived it as being difficult. Children pick up on these nuances all the time.”
In other words FEAR. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death. Fear ensures poor decision making. Fear ensures a reactive way of behaving instead of a proactive behaviour. And its social, very social. It is created by our culture. Its about how we relate to each other and our world around us. Since 9/11 I have noticed a palpable increase in fear across our entire society, and the accompanying lack of trust and isolation that goes with it. Life is always dangerous but being afraid of it just makes it worse. Because I taught math for decades I know that fear kills your ability to think logically and to believe that you can, after repeated mistakes, eventually get it right.
Why does this matter to us as we fearfully march towards our self-inflicted doom? I think we are so afraid that we cannot face the truth that we are destroying ourselves. We turn off our logical brain and choose leaders who avoid reality and its truth as much as possible. And one of the red flags that tell us this is the collapsing math scores of our students here in Canada. So, want to save the world? Help kids by successful in math. Help kids over come their fears. Help anybody you can, with patience and compassion, to face the nasty truth that, like in a math problem, if we get it wrong, we “die”. Mistakes are hard, mistakes make us feel stupid, mistakes makes us feel inadequate, but mistakes are how we learn best – but courage is required. And to be courageous we need to trust each other and never, never give up. Then our cerebral cortex has a chance to save us from ourselves. Now that you know how to save the world, how about trying this grade 9 level geometry problem and then finding a child to teach it to – its a challenge but its also truly satisfying when you finally solve it! [solution at reference 2]
Hint: draw in dotted line, use formulas for phythagorean theorem for triangle and formula for area of 1/4 of circle and solve … area always = 36π – now that is very cool!
References
Leave a Reply