The Fear Factor In my experience, there are four answers to this question.
The first is, because the feelings of inferiority and outright fear that many, proba-bly most, students feel when they confront mathematics, severely inhibit students' nat-ural intelligence and creativity. It is as though every mathematical subject, and every concept within a subject, is surrounded by a kind of "force field" that radiates, "Not for you!", "You aren't smart enough!". The origin of this force field may be early experiences in a family in which, say, a father had always been good at mathematics, and had made it clear he expected his children to likewise be good at the subject. In the case of women, the origin might be subtle messages sent by teachers throughout the primary and secondary school years, perhaps without conscious intention that technical subjects are too hard for girls. Or, it might be the atmosphere that surrounds mathematics and indeed all technical subjects in the nation's most prestigious schools, in which the question is not, Can you learn it?, but Can you learn it the way it is taught and at the pace that those in charge demand? Are you engineering or scientific or mathematics-professor material, yes or no? In short, Are you a winner or a loser? In the industrially-developed countries, mathematical ability is a ticket to personal value. If you have mathematical ability, there is no doubt that you have a right to be walking the face of the earth.
Furthermore, you will always be able to get a decent job, if only as a computer programmer or high school mathematics teacher. Those who do not have mathematical ability have no choice but to go into worthless subjects, namely, the liberal arts, and there waste their lives trying to convince the world that the alternative "truths" in these subjects are "just as good" as the truths defined by mathe-matics and science. So speaks the culture. But if you have ever had the opportunity to study, to poke around in a mathe-matical subject on your own when you could take all the time you wanted, when no grades were to be earned, when you were not surrounded by competing students who might be brighter than you, when you could start wherever you wanted to in the sub-ject and were not required to do all the exercises and get all or most of them right, when you could go as deeply or as shallowly as you wanted in any concept, when you could use popularizations to help you, or place an ad to find someone willing to explain things at your pace, knowing that if they didn't do a good job, you could sim-ply pay them off and go look for someone else in short, if you have ever had the opportunity to study all or part of a subject on your own terms, then perhaps you found (it took me many years) that mathematical subjects and concepts do not inherently come with an intimidating force field! They are just there. The subject is just
the subject is really interestin,i luv the subject becos if u are wrong u easily no but english language no way u can write a whole page and not no u are wrong By: itunuoluwa oladipupo | Date: 2010-11-26
i love d subject By: story ikhine | Date: 2012-07-23
Print
