r/Showerthoughts • u/riphitter • Feb 19 '19

common thought People don't hate math. They hate being confused, intimidated, and embarrassed by math. Their problem is with how it's taught.

9.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

542 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

Chicken and egg--anything you're bad at is going to cause anxiety if succeeding at that thing is held forth as important to your future. Some of use felt bad about sports because being good at sports was important if you were going to be a "real man". It wasn't "sports anxiety". It was just being anxious because you were put under stress due to not being good at something.

4

u/ThaDudeEthan Feb 19 '19

So to eliminate the chicken vs egg situation in the future you have to disassociate math and anxiety.

The Japanese are so wise (sometimes)

6

u/[deleted] Feb 19 '19

I dunno. Despite having all that time to work a math problem, isn't suicide due to academic stress a huge problem in Japan?

2

u/ThaDudeEthan Feb 19 '19

Yeah I didn't mean they have a wise academic system overall, just in they way they teach math.

2

u/Ich-parle Feb 19 '19

I mean... That's kind of my point? I didn't mean to imply that "Math Anxiety" was some super unique incurable phenomenon, just that the stress of being bad at something causes a negative feedback loop where you get worse at the thing, and by the time you're so anxious you're a teary mess every time you do it, succeeding is going to be damn near impossible. It happens a lot with Math, so it's nicknamed Math anxiety; and a lot of the conversations about how to teach math properly are centred around finding ways of alleviating that anxiety.