- On 2010-10-27
- By Edugain
Mathematics - Opening Children's mind to a beautiful subject
We often see that children are scared of mathematics. This manifests itself as a reluctance to understand the subject, and ultimately in them pushing the subject aside.
However, we believe that we at EduGain can help them in overcoming this fear and to excel in a beautiful subject that can grow their minds and expand their horizons.
The truth is that Mathematics is a fascinating and unique subject. This is the sense that we need to instil in them.
Mathematics is unique in the sense that all other areas we study came from our curiosity about the universe around us. We looked up at the night sky, and from our curiosity about what we saw, came up with astronomy and physics. We looked at the proliferation of life around us, and developed the science of biology. And so on.
But mathematics is something that originated in the human mind. It is true that the start of mathematics came from daily activities, where we distilled the concepts of numbers and counting, but soon it surpassed those humble origins and became something we create from our minds - pure abstract thought. No wonder it is often called "The queen of the sciences".
The reason why some children fear it is that it is projected in our education system as a very difficult area. However, this is not really true. We'll go into the specifics of these in later articles, but one thing that really helps is practise. It's true in all areas of human endeavour, but especially true for mathematics. Continous practise with various types of questions helps crystallize the concepts and that is when the fear of the subject goes away.
Sites like EduGain aim to aid the students in this aspect - by generating questions using an advanced engine, students get exposed to a variety of questions in all areas that help them understand the concept thoroughly and overcome their fears of this beautiful subject.