Mayanglambam Meghachandra Singh
Founder Member, KKEF
The most fascinating of all knowledge and the most phobia generating subject in the school curriculum is Mathematics. The way in which the mathematics is introduced to the learner lack of its daily application has been the root cause of the present scenario as experienced by everybody and everywhere. While celebrating Ramanujan’s dedicated life it is pertinent to note the ways in which one experiences mathematical applications in daily life from the time one gets up from bed till one goes to bed in the night. An attempt is being made to illustrate some of these instances in this brief paper, particularly to motivate children to learn this subject with interest and enthusiasm.
Mathematics is one of the most important subjects of our life. No matter to which field or profession we belong to, its use is everywhere. That is why it is necessary to have basic understanding of this subject. Though the basics of mathematics start from school but its usage continues till we become adults and thus it can be said that mathematics has become an integral part. Imagining our lives without it is like a ship without a sail.
It might be surprised to know that we use mathematics every day even without knowing it. From dialling numbers to make a phone call, making the payments, our world is surrounded by mathematics. So let us see what impact this subject has made to our life.
For example, while preparing food, we always measure the different ingredients so as to cook the desired quantity only. This is possible only because of the mathematics. If we were not aware of the numbers, it would not have been possible to measure, make adjustments and cook tasty food. So we can say that our day begins with the concept of mathematics.
Similarly when we go for shopping, we prepare a list of items, calculate the amount of money needed for it etc. All this calculation is based on numbers which come from mathematics. Without the numbers, we cannot decide how much we need to pay to the vendor and how much we have saved. So in the case of shopping too, we are with the world of mathematics.
In the field of banking – This is the sector where a number of concepts of mathematics are applied and therefore the experts need to have a good understanding and command of the subject. Handling the transactions of the bank is not simple and we need to have some knowledge of mathematics in order to maintain our account, deposit and withdraw money etc. If we wish to take a loan, we need to have an idea about the interest we will have to pay and what will be the monthly premium that we would need to pay. In short, the banking sector is completely related to mathematics and so even the customers need to be familiar with it.
Travelling – Everyone loves to travel but there is a lot more to it than the enjoyment. While planning our vacation, we not only have to decide the place where we wish to go but book our hotel, tickets etc. All this requires budget planning and a sense of understanding of mathematics so that we can accomplish the different tasks successfully. From the traveling distance to its cost, bus tickets, hiring cabs etc. all requires mathematics.
Thus from the above examples, it is clear that there is no area where the concept of mathematics is not used. We cannot do any subject without this subject and that is why it is very important to teach the basics of mathematics to function the everyday activities of life. So have fun with the number and enjoy.
When we get up, we see the time of waking to verify whether we have enough time to attend to various responsibilities (time management, reading a clock / watch). When we brush our teeth the life of the brush, its cost, the paste, its available quantity, when we will get new one etc. that come to one’s mind is also need of mathematics.
Drinking coffee, tea, milk- the quantity, the temperature balance not affecting the tongue, quantity consumable, proportion of mixes constituting milk, coffee powder or decoction, boiling stage, filtering mechanism, washed cups / glasses ensuring health and a host of things require analysis, reasoning and attention (practical knowledge of ratio and proportion). We regularly use mathematics in our everyday life: from measuring distances and weights to reading timetables, estimating how much money we spent while shopping and interpreting percentages in newspapers. Many of these skills are taught at primary school level.
A large part of the secondary mathematics curriculum does indeed not seem very useful in everyday life: from solving quadratic equations to sketching graphs, long division or trigonometry. The importance of these areas in the curriculum and for examination explains opinions like the one above.
Since we are primarily thinking about school mathematics, it is worth observing that many of the skills taught in mathematics are required in other subjects. This is clearly true for sciences, but also geography, where children may have to find the area of countries or distance between cities, or politics, where children may have to interpret data describing our life. There is significant research regarding these transferable skills and whether pupils actually use them.
I believe that the problem is not so much that mathematics can’t be applied to the real world in a school context, but that questions are created in the wrong way. Usually, teachers and textbook authors start with a mathematical idea that needs to be taught and invent real world problems around them. The more realistic approach would be to start with a real world problem, think – together with the students – about the kind of mathematics necessary to solve the problem, and then link it with various parts of the curriculum.
There is another argument against the practical value of mathematics: computers. Many calculations that had to be done by hand only 20 years ago can now be done easily using computers – and the ability of computers will continue to increase in the future. Do students still need to learn any mathematics? This is certainly an important point to consider. However while computers may be able to solve arithmetic problems, they can’t formulate real life problems in terms of arithmetic or algebra, and they can’t interpret what the results mean for the initial problem. I believe that rather than reducing the amount of mathematics that needs to be learned, computers present a great opportunity for the mathematics curriculum in the future. Students may not need to learn how to do long division or how to solve quadratic equations. This gives space in the curriculum for much more advanced problems. In the past, these would have been too difficult because of complex computations – today, computers can do the boring and tedious parts of mathematics while students can focus on applications, the underlying principles and mathematical thinking, this will be discussed in more detail to the next paragraph.
Mathematics is notorious for being hard. While in other social science subjects, you can always write essays on topics you don’t really understand – even if they are of low quality – Mathematics usually requires a clear grasp of the underlying concepts or necessary results. If you don’t understand a question, it will be almost impossible to attempt a solution.
On the other hand, Mathematics can show what our mind is capable of doing. It is no coincidence that intelligence tests always include many mathematical and logical puzzles. Studying mathematics exercises our brain in a manner that is quite different from most other human activities. There is much research regarding the relationship between mathematics and the brain, ranging from education to neuroscience.
This essay analysed the importance and value of mathematics from a variety of perspectives: practical value in everyday life, the value of mathematical reasoning, and the cultural value of mathematics. Of course, it is impossible to measure these values quantitatively, and their relative importance depends very much on the reader’s personal opinion and experience.
It is no doubt that mathematics as a subject is invaluable, but many doubts have been raised regarding the value of the school mathematics curriculum for the majority of children.
In the conclusion, we shouldn’t neglect mathematics but different mathematics, focussing more on problem solving and ‘mathematical thinking’, or on mathematical intuition and real life situations, and focussing less on memorising formulas and simply applying algorithms. Throughout the essay I discussed examples of opportunities how the mathematics curriculum could be made more exciting, useful or modern. Many government and non-government initiations have started to change school mathematics. It is the need of the hour to revive the importance and value of teaching and learning of mathematics by restructuring school mathematics curriculum and by adopting a systematic and modernised teaching method.
