Vaccaro and Lockhart agree on the solution, yet with some small caveats. Removing such obstacles may allow some students to pass the threshold fearlessly and experience math again, but math needs to entice too. Additionally, multiple studies have shown mixed-ability teaching can increase confidence and develop critical thinking skills. A study exploring the effects of positive and negative reinforcement by teachers showed a significant reduction in heart rate for those students positively encouraged. Fortunately, all these can be reversed with targeted action. The antecedent to student math anxiety has a plurality of progenitors, from parent legacy math anxiety and teacher communication to the more social anxiety from ‘competing’ with peers. Approximately 93% of adult US-Americans indicate that they experience some level of math anxiety, with 59% of 15- to 16-year-old students reporting feeling worried regarding math class. Looking at the numbers shows the impact anxiety is having on our population's potential. The fear so many see embedded within their math relationship needs to be dissected and replaced with the promise of creative pursuits and critical thinking. Math needs more than rebranding, it needs reinventing. With the natural connection of students to math severed, math’s essence is lost, and what’s left is anxiety and resistance. David Vaccaro, a recent guest on our Math Matters Podcast, repeated the metaphor to describe how math has fallen for the same fate as Lockhart’s lament, the playful exploration of patterns and ideas lost to formulaic means. Mathematics, like music, is an artform, Lockhart argues, and to cut creativity from math is akin to doing the same with music. Students, frustrated by limitations set against their natural urge to play with sound, disengage, locked solely on obeying their leader’s instruction towards assessment goals and test result leaderboards. ![]() ![]() In Paul Lockhart’s short story, the ‘ Mathematician’s Lament’ we enter a dream world, one where music education has been reduced to mechanical, rote accumulation of rules and repetition.
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