Don’t Like - Hating Math

I think the worst myth in education is that math is a useless subject. To be clear, it’s not educators who feel this way but the students. Math is a subject that you seem to either get or don’t get. At least, that’s how it feels anyway—and for good reason. Math is the first subject to get broken out into tiers. While some students are in geometry, others are in algebra while others still are in pre-calc. This creates a hierarchy of smarts. So, if you’re not someone who “gets” math, it can be an overwhelming and isolating subject. There are right answers here and it’s on you to figure out how to reach them. If you’re not good at getting them, you might start to say things like “real life doesn’t require calculus.” In many senses that is true but that doesn’t mean calculus isn’t worth learning. Moreover, this attitude forecloses the potential to learn other more applied kinds of math like statistics. But the real problem here is that math is a fascinating subject that people shouldn’t write off—and I say this as someone who has written math off. I regret that.