Kamal Baruah
(kamal.baruah@yahoo.com)
Schoolchildren normally feel a lot of anxiety about their Maths papers, and many drop out of school even before matriculation. Different students possess different forms of intelligence, and I wonder why there is only one mathematics paper for all at the school level when most students have more than one form of intelligence. Many opine that math is indispensable for commerce in the science stream only, but the narrower aim of teaching math at school is to develop useful capabilities, particularly those relating to numeracy—numbers, number operations, measurements, decimals, and percentages. Parents often get upset by their little one’s bad grade on a test or a report card at primary school. The other day, I had to calm down one such parent on a lighter note. Who is the math teacher, and by the way, who taught math at home? Parents had to take the blame for low scores. Not every student learns in the same way, and therefore not every student can accurately demonstrate mastery of educational topics and concepts in a similar fashion.
The Maths phobia remains with this writer too, and I got caught doing so on numerous occasions. The whole class VI failed once in our half-yearly examination except one, and I was the only odd man out to qualify. I also recollect once when our daughter was asked at school about her Maths teacher at home after scoring hundred upon hundred in Class VI. It’s the teacher, from his or her experience and insights, who can develop a mindset for learning and understanding Maths. One just can’t find fault with those young minds. They need your support.
I was blessed to learn mathematics only at a much later stage of my university days in the land of Ramanujan, a self-educated mathematician who was known for his theorems that contributed significantly to understanding number series, infinite series, and continued fractions. It was another Prof. M. Venkataraman, when I met him as our class teacher at Madurai Kamaraj University. The fascinating tale of people at the temple city of Madurai was truly reminiscing in my mind. It was in the late 90s, and we had once assembled for the very first class of the day for our yearly seminar at MKU. It wasn’t like any other class room that was filled with only students from across India, but there were defence personnel deputed by their department for the MBA programme. The university’s praiseworthy effort to organize all students at their campus in one dais was a remarkable coincidence. We were also shocked to see when a PSO was guarding a brigadier outside the class for security cover and a batman was brought for his orderly. All the students stared at the flag car of the one-star in shocked silence.
As we were all preoccupied in the classroom, it reminded us that no matter how much we learn, there is always something new to be experienced. It was sharp at 9 o’clock in the morning. A dhoti-clad gentleman in all white outfits entered our class. It holds deep-rooted significance in Tamil Nadu’s cultural fabric and is considered a symbol of timeless elegance and cultural pride. Before we guessed anything seriously, Prof. chalked a cross mark on the blackboard. Someone at the backbencher spoke in a whisper—it’s the Red Cross. He greeted us all with a smile and introduced himself. I’m your math teacher, and we will learn quantitative methods and statistics. So let’s try to re-memorize our basic Maths within an hour before we go for another hour of mathematical jargon.
He delivered his speech in English with a strong Tamil accent. To some, Maths can be fun! Some maths can be surprising, and some can be unexpected. In our daily lives, we are confined to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division only. He went ahead with very general and fundamental formulas for basic Maths, simplifying equations from BODMAS Rule to fractions, percentages, formulas for proportion, and expressions. Maths is the science of structure, order, and relation that has evolved from the basic practices of counting, measuring, and describing the shapes of objects. It deals with logical reasoning and quantitative calculation.
Though most of the students from the Armed Forces had little or no experience with Maths, he used a variety of materials to inspire us and provide mathematical solutions for real-world problems. His focus was sharp, clear, and powerful, and soon he covered up all basic Maths just within an hour, and we all, from varying backgrounds in science, commerce, the humanities, and soldiers from the Armed Forces, were enlightened then. With his massive and relentless focus, he could complete the entire chapter in just two weeks with overall effectiveness.
So the other day, I realized It really matters who taught you Maths at home, and I could give some understanding of Maths in our daughter’s early grades for learning the fundamentals. We were jubilant over her board examination, scoring 100 out of 100 in both the Maths papers. So I also did my Maths paper in one sitting. Today, computers are slowly replacing humans in experimental mathematics. Computers can be valuable tools for helping mathematicians solve problems since they have technology such as Maple, Mathematica, or Sage computing software packages on their side.
Even access to calculators in the elementary grades does not negate the need for students to develop paper-and-pencil and mental methods. Rather, calculators play a key role in developing students’ fluency with numbers, operations, and estimation skills when used appropriately. Prof. M. Venkataraman is a credit to my math paper in the postgraduate programme in management. It certainly helped to deepen my understanding of Maths and I regret any Maths anxiety that I may, unwittingly, have caused today.