Archive for the ‘Math Anxiety’ Category

I’m increasingly conscious of the gap between the urgent calls for more effective math education in the U.S., and the seemingly low expectations some parents have for their own child to advance in math. It’s as if the pressing national need has nothing to do with us on a personal level. I hear parents talk [...]

We’re about to send our November parent newsletter, featuring an article on 'math anxiety'. In the course of writing the article we came across several sites that offer resources to help parents understand and deal with the doubt, fear, and loss of confidence kids can have if they've have bad experiences with math. Fortunately, you can overcome math anxiety and set yourself (or your child) up to succeed in math by having good experience learning mathematics. As parent who had to struggle to build a positive math attitude, I thought some of you might find these useful.

We've had a lively discussion in our office this week about the recent New York Times article on issues in US math education in general, and in encouraging girls to be successful in math in particular (“Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/education/10math.html). What’s one of the reasons US students are falling behind in math? As the article says, “American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls – and boys, for that matter – from excelling in the field.” As early as late elementary school or middle school, kids who used to love math all of a sudden realize that it’s not “cool”, and/or that “math is really hard and I’m not good at it so I won’t try very hard”. Talk about pre-ordaining failure!

I remember my first day in middle school in Florence, Italy. It is a sunny morning in September. The classroom is full of nervous eleven year olds, glancing around studying the faces of the strangers sitting in the same room. Everyone has a brand new backpack, deformed by the heavy load of pristine new books; you can see all the new clothes, new shoes, new pens and pen pouches, new notebooks that the parents bought in the summer weeks preceding this very important day. The aroma of freshly sharpened No.2 pencils, papers of many kinds, vinyl binders, and books is overwhelming and exciting. Everybody is on their best behavior, trying to make a good first impression, ready to learn and make friends; ready to be exposed to all the new and exciting knowledge reserved for middle school kids, and become part of a club that was out of reach until this very day. The big kids club!