Sunday, September 30, 2012

Vanquishing Math Phobia


Vanquishing Math Phobia

Sue Shellenbarger, in a Wall Street Journal article titled A Worksheet for Math-Phobic Parents (August 29, 2012), talks about how most parents, being math-phobic, are transmitting that attitude to their kids, thus perpetuating math phobia and incompetence.

I too was math-phobic until I learned about the Barriers to Learning.  It turns out that my math teachers had been committing/inflicting several of these Barriers on me.

The Barriers that my teachers inflicted on me were:
  • Too steep a gradient of information
  • Using non-defined words and symbols,
  • Why this subject was important to learn, and
  • How was the knowledge relevant to my life.

When I applied the proper remedies listed in the book How to Learn – How to Teach: Overcoming the Barriers to Learning, I vanquished my math phobia, and recovered my math education.

I vanquished my math phobia to such an extent that I now tutor in math for Literacy Partners.  And I did such a good job communicating math concepts to my students that they created a math class just for me called Applied Math.

Math is not scary once you remedy your Barriers to Learning.

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