Maths n Moi

I used to hate Maths.

It is not surprising to hear this sentiment being expressed by lakhs of school students across the world. The only difference is that, they express the sentiment in the present tense!

When I was in primary school, one of my math teachers taught the concept of Highest Common Factor (HCF a.k.a. GCD – Greatest Common Divisor) and Least Common Multiple (LCM) in class. Try as I might, I just could not grasp the difference between the two.

That evening, when I came back from school and sat down to do my homework, I struggled valiantly with the two concepts but just could not get the suns right. The efforts to get through the text book exercise was so great that I was close to tears. Mom saw me sitting with a dejected look on my face and asked me what the matter was.

“I hate Maths! I don’t want to go to School. Why do I have to go there everyday when I can just sit back at home and learn the same on my own?”

Luckily, mom was among those select few parents who rarely took her child’s words at face value and always tried to probe for the underlying actual cause. After having sat with me for a long time, she realized that it was the frustration of not understanding a concept in math that was killing me. On one hand, I was the class stud in all subjects, consistently scoring well and on the other hand, here I was… unable to solve even one problem correctly in the new chapter that I was ‘taught’ that day in class.

Having understood the issue, mom patiently sat with me and first showed me what HCF was all about. She asked me to forget the LCM part of it. Having understood one concept, she made me do all the sums of HCF first to get my basics firmly in place. Unburdened by multiple concepts, I could steadily breeze through half the exercise. Then she took on the concept of LCM. At the end of a couple of hours, there I was with a completed homework assignment in hand and a grin on my face. I no longer hated school and all was well with the world again!

Years later, when mom was remembering this incident, I realized that many students start hating mathematics because of such similar experiences in school. They are burdened with too many concepts by teachers who simply ‘teach’ the ‘hows’ and not the ‘whys’. Had I not had my mom to explain me the basic fundamentals that day, I guess I would never had learnt to chuck my fear of mathematics.