Tuesday 19 July 2011

Why Students Hate Math


Math is based largely in part on perception. Math has 2 basic types, the visual and the perceptual.
Visual math’s are geometry and trig (and the like)
but algebra is mostly perceptual.


At the time most students are taught to learn by and believe what they can see and tangibly perceive, math is telling students to think perceptually and not depend on what actually exists. This is frustration for most students and they either give up or say that they "hate math"

 
Once students begin to understand the concept of perceiving what actually isn't there, schools throw geometry, a very visual math, at them. This makes them need to back track and forget about non-visual perception, causing more frustration.

Once done with geometry, it's time for algebra again, meaning back to non-visual perception. And after that it's trig which is visual

students don't particularly hate math, it is just difficult because just as one idea is learned, it is ignored it the next concept. This causes frustration and causes most students to simply give up.

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