Thursday, June 10, 2010

A new educational approach.

Mathematics. Yes, the most dreaded subject when you were young and still dread to this day. Well, I like Maths, but maybe because I'm Asian and crazy like that.

I was pondering why people dislike Maths so much. I think it's because in education, we are not teaching students the abilities and skills needed to do the subject, but instead, the subject itself. For example, I see Drama and Performing Arts as a way of building confidence, being able to communicate more effectively with other people by the medium of speech. I see English as a way of building communication skills in writing, able to criticize and critically analyze information. I, therefore see Maths as a way of building logic and reasoning skills, able to think out processes. We shouldn't be teaching students that English is about essay writing, reading novels and then memorizing quotes to replicate in exam conditions. We, therefore, should not be applying the indication that Maths is about numbers, letters, formulas, graphs and all those other weird and wonderful, tacky things like calculus and binomials.

If we change the visual concept of Maths, and every other subject likewise, we would have a more effective education system, were students are learning about the processes, rather than the actual subject.

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