Do the maths

Just before I went to university and then again a couple of years afterwards, I did some maths tutoring. I can tell you quite easily what was at the root of my pupils' need for tutoring and that was a fear of numbers. For example, one girl I taught could easily tell you how much change she should get from a pound if she bought a bar of chocolate but would look at me wide-eyed and panicky if I asked her what 100 takeaway 30 was. 

Once I had children of my own, I was adamant that I would ensure that they were comfortable with numbers from an early age, so that mathematics would never be a cause of concern for them. To some extent, I was successful but only until they started school. Once they were doing maths lessons I found to my dismay that I couldn't help. This wasn't because the maths itself was difficult but because I simply couldn't understand the way the subject was being taught. Even simple arithmetic was shrouded in impenetrable methodology.

And what was worse was that often I suspected that the person teaching it didn't really understand the method and so consequently the children would have been sent home with inadequate explanations of what they needed to do. Thus, while I could tell them the answer to a problem, I couldn't for the life of me show the working in the way that it was required. 

And so it has been this week, with Abi sent home with a sheet to complete but literally no idea what she's supposed to do. It's all to do with fractions. I like fractions! And whilst I suspected that I was unlikely to instil a similar affection in her over the course of one set of homework, I hoped to set her off down the same road. 

So, we went back to basics, taking a drawing of a cake and dividing it into quarters and eighths, and thereby seeing that a quarter is the same as two eighths and, from there, how one could add a quarter to an eighth without any need for hyperventilation. That method was less use when we got to adding a fifth to a quarter but the basics were now in place.

I think it's a terrible shame that some children come away from school scared of - and scarred by - maths. And I think it's criminal that so few come away being excited by maths. (I have a similar rant along the lines of 'How can anyone manage to make physics boring?!') There is some serious but perhaps esoteric beauty to be found in the world of numbers in the same way that there is more magic and cause for dumbfoundedness in the world of physics than there is in any Harry Potter book or religious text. In fact, there is so much to marvel at in this world that I despair when I talk to small children stuck doing projects on the Tudors and not, for example, on the Apollo missions. There's something to get excited about! In fact, there are so many things to get excited about. And maths can be one of them.