When we were asked to choose an elective for MA2, it was not a hard choice. The minute there was a module that mentioned mathematics I knew that was the one I wanted to do. To me, mathematics is the subject that makes the most sense. The fact that I enjoyed mathematics in school was always something that my family and friends did not understand. The minute that math is mentioned as something that you love mathematics, people give you strange looks and ask you ‘Why?’. Many people struggled to understand why I would enjoy a subject that is all about numbers and equations. They struggled to see why I would choose to understand the language of numbers rather than the language we are all use to in standard English reading books. Well, why would I not choose the world of numbers? If you cannot understand the numbers around you then you will not be able to understand the world.
One common dislike of mathematics is that there is only ever one answer. That is always my answer to why I love mathematics so much. I have always loved that if you follow through an equation correctly then you will get the correct answer. Compared to English texts which could be interpreted in any way depending on the person and how you understood the text. However, this is not always the case. Some areas of mathematics are not as structured as always having one answer. In fact, some areas of mathematics might not even be about getting a correct answer but about what you can create using mathematics.
The way our curriculum is structured why would anyone see the fun and adventure in numbers. When mathematics is mentioned, the general response tends to be ‘why do you like it?’ or ‘when are you going to use it in day-to-day life?’. Most mathematics that you learn in secondary school may never be used unless you go into a certain career. However, mathematics is used very differently in normal day-to-day life. How can we get children to enjoy mathematics and see the fun in it if they only think of mathematics as times tables or algebra? Children need to be shown the fun in mathematics. They need to be shown how mathematics is weaved throughout several of their other subjects. Maybe if children were shown how people in history discovered how to work out the area of a shape or how symmetry is used in architectural they might be more interested in learning mathematics (Sautoy). If the curriculum brought in a context to mathematics rather than children learning an equation, how to use it but they think they will never use it again. Having more of an understanding of the background to math would help engage children in mathematics a lot more than simply sitting learning from a textbook.
Professor Marcus du Sautoy described mathematics as a language that you needed to work on to understand just like Shakespeare. I think this comparison describes mathematics and what you need to do to understand it perfectly. At school, I always struggled to understand Shakespeare but several people struggle to understand the language of mathematics. If the children that struggle with math are sat down and helped to understand the language of numbers, just as those who do not understand an English book or Shakespeare are treated then I think we would have a lot more people in the world who would see mathematics as a good thing and not something not worth learning.
References
du Sautoy, M. (2009) The secret life of numbers. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/jun/23/maths-marcus-du-sautoy (Accessed: 14 October 2016).
