your attitude to maths

[JessJones93]

ive just started training as a teacher and i am working through the maths unit, i have luckily always just taken a shine to maths (probs also because of my maths teacher dad) but lacked confidence in more essay based subjects (like english) and average public response is to take more confidence in essay based subjects and take a general dislike to maths - i don't really understand this because, as i said, i grew up in a maths loving household which seems to be the polar opposite of many houses in the UK

what about you? it would be really helpful to me if you could share your attitude to maths and why you have that opinion (bad maths tuition at school? boring? etc) and do your children have a similar opinion on the subject as you?

thanks :)

Never had any confidence in Maths.

I had poor teaching in secondary school and a Dad who didn't have any patience if I didn't 'get it' at home. Mind you he had three of us to help with homework.

To this day I still struggle. I sat next to a girl at school who was a Maths whizz and found it a breeze, she let me copy some of her answers as I really struggled in class, the teacher often saw me do this yet still failed to pull me to one side. I ended up with a Grade 4 CSE.

Ds seems to really enjoy Maths. He's in Y1 so early days but still he was scored a 9 in Reception and it seems be continuing in Y1, his teacher told me at parents evening that she'd given him Y2 work and he'd breezed through it. I REALLY want him to have confidence in Maths unlike me, I don't want him to go through life as I have.

Just one question. The Maths book for Mums and Dads, from which year in Primary is this good for. Have to say I'm dreading the more complicated homework he'll bring home as he gets older.

I'm of the either you're the maths type or not view.

My dad was extremely able at maths-by todays standards I think he would have been classed as gifted,my mum was terrified of it and is v Englishy iykwim. She was a teacher.

Anyhow I was the same as mum,got my maths O'level ok but didn't shine at it and didn't enjoy it.Quite enjoyed teaching it at primary level but my degree was English.

All 3 of my dc are v Englishy but my boys are naturally good at maths.Dd is like me and doesn't get it.I noticed the difference v early on.She doesn't struggle but has low confidence and endures it although this term she's enjoying it more as her current teacher is quite mathsy and is doing a lot of fun investigations,enjoys mistakes and encourages discussion etc.

Have treated all 3 the same.Dd just doesn't enjoy it,like me and mum.She's definitely getting more confident(maybe better,hard to tell) now she is enjoying it more.Going by threads on here I think you get a lot of girls less confident at it.

I loved maths at school, till I was 16. I loved it because I 'got it' easily, found it fun, like a puzzle...both my parents were moderately keen too.

At 16, I moved to a different school: the class was mostly very very bright foreign students, and the teacher taught them at the expense of the rest of us - I floundered, didn't know how to ask for help, and felt like a total failure. I then stopped liking maths for a few years.

dd1 is nearly 9, was top set in maths at school but floundering a bit - I saw her panicking over homework, for example - and wouldn't admit it: she just said 'I hate maths' and wouldn't even look at it. She's had a bit of tutoring to cover the basics she missed out on (patchy teaching at infants level, as teachers were either ill or on maternity leave) and is now loving it again.

SO much to do with confidence, I think! Well done you, OP, for asking

The 'Maths for Mums and Dads' book is great for all the way through primary. I went to a primary teachers' conference a few years ago and had a seminar with the author, Rob Eastaway. He's great

I've just been having a look at that book on Amazon, he's got one for secondary school coming out in Jan.

When I was at school I always thought I was bad at maths because I was basically ignored, I was stuck in the top set because I was quiet and good at other subjects. However I need to plod through methodically to get maths and my teacher worked at the speed of the brightest in the class and I think once you get left behind a bit in maths it's disastrous.

It's only when I left school and retook my O level that I discovered I'm actually good at maths, I'm now an accountant and passed all my exams first time. I'm determined to ensure my dd knows there is nothing scary in maths and that she CAN do it. I'm not saying she's exceptionally good at it but she doesn't dislike the subject.

I think how maths is taught and the understanding of the teacher that not every one learns the same way is of vital importance, even for those who are good at maths.

My mum always said she hated Maths, could ot it do it, and was scared of it. Consequently, I went into Maths classes thinking it was scary and that I could ot do it. First issues in Y2 when I did not get fractions and had to sit with head teacher, who was supposed to be helping me but instead was chatting to someone who had just popped in. Following this struggled all through junior school. The fatal blow was dealt on my first day at secondary school when the maths teacher decided to pick on me for not telling him my name and then saying sir. He scared me to bits, and I missed every part of Maths in the term before going down a Maths group and then being bottom of that one too. I am determined that this will not happen to my children. I am actually not that bad at Maths just needed a gentle approach and for things to be explained to me properly, with no adding numbers onto both sides because "you just do".

We're a maths-loving family, too. Both my husband and I have advanced degrees in physics and/or mathematics.

Our daughter is still young (5 years old, in reception), but we encourage her to add and subtract numbers (as I imagine everyone here does, too). She also knows that the log(1)=0 (just a piece of trivia we taught her), and that dividing by zero is a mortal sin (even though she doesn't know what division really is yet), and she knows about negative numbers. I used to joke, when she was still head-butting me from the inside, that she'd know calculus by the time she was 9 years old (which seems a tad optimistic, I now realize).

anice: "In other words, it all depends upon whether you are artistic or logical..."

Can't one be both?

OP - I recommend the book 'How Children Fail' by John Holt, revised edition - it's all about trying to figure out what is going through the minds of children learning maths in primary school, and how something that seems so simple like multiplication can be misunderstood in so many ways, as well as some of the things stopping kids learning - fear of not knowing if they are right or wrong, mainly. Better to just be wrong. Really powerful stuff.

I suspect ds and dn (age 4, dn is at school) are mathematically minded, very systematic with games and can happily add when they feel like it.

I get the feeling that many teachers are comfortable telling girls that they're "rubbish at maths". I wonder if they're quicker to say this to girls than to boys?

For the record, if a teacher told my daughter that she was bad at anything, especially maths, I would completely freak out. That's the kind of shite I won't tolerate.

DD2 is certainly artistic and logical Vintage- she's just started her second year of studying Maths at university and her room is decorated with canvasses that she painted over the summer holidays.

Yes, webniz, that was precisely my point. I don't think of logic and creativity as being mutually exclusive. In my family, for example, everyone seems to have a healthy balance of both.

As a family, we too like maths.

I have found it quite easy to teach dd maths. It is a series of logical steps.
However, how to solve problems for herself is much harder to teach. This to me is creative, as it requires imagination. Surely thiis is why maths degrees are BA's rather than BSc's?

I didn't mind maths but I was always more interested in subjects related to language and people, so I am afraid I just saw maths as taking time from that. Nothing wrong with it per se and I am sure it is very necessary- but roll on the afternoon when we're doing Catullus/the Versailles treaty/Dante's Inferno.

My dad was very keen on maths and my db also, so I could have had that passion from home had I wanted it. Db is also far more musical than I am; maths and music often seem to go together. Again, I had nothing against music and was happy enough to learn the basics, but my own interests lay elsewhere.

I liked math when I was a child, but I would not say I was the best from it, but also I never worried about it. My son, who is 4, seems like math a lot. He is better than average, but not the best.

I think math should be easy and it is, if you understand it. Yes you need to understand, and you need to understand the basic. If you know why 2X3=6, or 5+4=9, than you won't have problem to learn the time tables for example. If you understand the basic, than you do not need to know how much 8X8, because you can apply your understanding (the same strategy that you used to find out how much is 2X3). If you just learn that 2X3 always equal 6 than you will struggle to find out how much is 8X8, you can remember the answer, but what about bigger numbers what is not in the time tables but you should apply the same rules. I think this is one thing about math; you need to understand it from the basic. Your math as good as much you understand the foundation (the basic) in math (if you know what I mean). If your foundation is extremely good you can build on it. And I think the best if you let your children or students to find out the answers by themselves by building up their walls on the foundation.

The other things that you need to understand to make math easy, that one problem has lots of different solution and all of these different solution can be right. One solution is probably the easiest, the other solution is that your teacher showed you in the classroom and another one is that you find out by yourself, all of them good. And probably you will remember the best of the solution that you find out by yourself.

rrbrigi: You're most definitely correct when it comes to the need to understand maths. If you think of maths as a series of formulae that must be memorized, then maths are going to be hard and boring. But if you understand the logic behind maths, then everything is very straightforward and there's nothing to memorize.

For example-and this may be a poor example, but it's my example-there was a gap of about 8 years between the time I last took a maths course and the time I started my undergraduate studies in physics. In all those intervening years, I did nothing remotely related to maths or science. However, I had no trouble jumping right into physics. In my case, since I had understood all that algebra, trig, and calculus taught to me when I was young, I had no problem when confronted with the maths presented in physics. However, if I had relied on rote memory to get through maths, I wouldn't have succeeded in my physics studies; I would have needed to spend a considerable time re-memorizing formulae.

In summary, you don't need to memorize anything in maths (or physics for that matter). If you truly understand the the material, then there's no need to memorize anything at all. All equations and formulae can be simply derived from first principles and basic logic.

I share Gabsid's view on this and, in fact, I'm really rather amazed at most people's responses here.
People do not have a genetic disposition to maths - at least not unless we're talking Cambridge professorships.
Anyone can be taught maths successfully if the teaching starts by introducing simple concepts in concrete situations and building up gently, giving lots of practice along the way.
I was teaching a Y2 child the other day for the first time and it turned out that the child had no idea what tens and units meant. To her they were just words and she didn't understand them. Within minutes of situating these concepts in real concrete terms - leaves on a tree, children playing in a playground, flowers in a bowl - she'd got it. Her teacher had presented abstract ideas that were way over her head, leaving her fearful and anxious, which, I would guess, is why so many people think that maths is either hateful or something that only some people can do.
The key to maths is conceptual understanding. Too much teaching is based on procedural learning (2 X 2 = 4, etc.). It's all very well learning how to manipulate mathematical symbols but if you don't understand what they mean and how they can be applied, it's useless.

There was an interesting programme on radio 4 the other day "land of the rising sums" www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nkxkv about why asian cultures are so much better at maths. I didn't catch all of it but the bit I did hear was about using the abacus and having something concrete to relate to.

I think I may be discalculic. I am very ashamed at my inability to grasp simple math. Interesting thread.

I was taught badly at primary school, and left without knowing my times tables or any mental arithmetic, thinking that I was bad at maths. Partly from being ignored by teachers, and partly due to my parents not knowing how to help me or that I needed help.

When I got to secondary school, and started being allowed to use a calculator, my confidence soared, and I moved from a middle set to the top set. Without the pressure of needing to know 7x6 I just seemed to have a natural ability to know how to rearrange equations etc, and went on to get an A at GCSE and went on to do A Level Maths.

I will not let this happen to my son. He's in reception at the moment and seems to enjoy maths. He's always bugging me with number bond questions. I've ordered Maths for Mum and Dads to read and will get him an abacus for Christmas which I know he'll love. I know exactly what's on the EYFS curriculum and what he needs to know, and will do the same for KS1.

At school, I've always preferred maths and the sciences to essay writing. Ask me (or my son) to write something down and we drawn a blank.