Where do the children go?

Hey hi,

Before we get into some Math, may I interest you in a small, creative visualization? I promise to keep it as non-mathematical as possible. Imagine, if you will, a large meadow dotted with some red clovers and other wild flowers. There are some butterflies gliding lazily thinking about which flower they should sit on next.

The meadow is huge enough so that a 360 degree turn(damn, I really tried to make it number-free) reveals only more meadowland. The landscape though is not completely flat, there are some small hills, and in the distance, some larger mountains are also visible. But hey, the weather and the temperature are lovely and you can smell the freshly-cut grass and, of course, the flowers.

Wait, doesn’t that sound like the chatter of children? There they are, on a small hill, there is a large group of children, it looks like these kids are having a picnic. You can now hear the kids laughing and talking excitedly. Clearly, they are a bunch of happy and enthusiastic kids. The guardians and the kids are all enjoying the weather and having a good time.

In a little while, the kids are told that they have to now explore the meadow and move ahead in their picnic journey. The kids in one group all run down the hill and either continue running or start walking when they reach the flatlands. The kids are all unanimously happy. They are liking the grass, some of them are stopping intermittently; here you can see a fellow admiring an interesting flower and there, you can see somebody else who is feeling the grass on the meadow and let’s not forget the child who is running around trying to catch a butterfly.

Soon, they reach a small hill and this is where some of the kids lose interest. After the downhill run and the flatland walk, some children are just not interested in any uphill trek. Some guardians are trying to motivate the children to go ahead. They remind the children that are some refreshments on the top of the hill that will help them go ahead more easily. What’s more, once they climb the hill with a little effort, they will be rewarded by the downhill ease of the next leg of the exercise!

But unfortunately, our big group of children becomes a little smaller. Though, a sizeable proportion will climb the hill take the refreshments, run downhill with glee, and impelled with the downhill motion run some of the flatland part faster than the rest; there will be a small portion that will skip the hill, skirt around it and will not even get refreshments. They will hence take more time than the others to get back onto the path, a couple of kids may even get lost or sit at the foot of the hills refusing to go further.

These children will face quite a few of these hills and unfortunately, the hills will only increase in height; so we will end up losing more and more children as we progress further. By the time we climb 8–10 of such hills the number of children are less than half.

I am sure, some of you can see the analogy of the above example with how our kids are learning Mathematics right from their pre-school. All kids love the initial part of learning numbers and learning to count, this is when they are dashing downhill with delight; they are all enthusiastic and happy when they are doing Mathematics at this stage. But as they move further they start coming across hurdles (our hills), the first small hills that children face are the carry over in addition and the borrowing in subtraction. If guardians are not careful, it is inevitable that their children may lose their joy in Mathematics and will most likely become unenthusiastic in the pursuit of Mathematics. Later, you have the slightly larger hill of long division and wait, oh my God, there is the huge mountain of fractions.

Fractions is unequivocally the biggest battle-ground that the kids are going to fight at in their primary school arena. You may ask here; what are they fighting? They are fighting the urge to give up when faced with something a little complicated, they are avoiding arming themselves with the weapons of concentration, sincerity and discipline that will help them break-down the fraction cage into bite-sized pieces; they are running away from the concept of perseverance: spending time with things that you do not get till you get them. These weapons — concentration, sincerity, discipline, perseverance — if they can pick up it up now will help them not just in Mathematics nor just in education but in life.

Children who survive the trek through the fraction mountain then have to pass through the Compound Interest and Time Speed Distance hills. Finally when the kids are just relaxing with the Arithmetic Flatland, they see the Algebra Mountain looming ahead. Before they even cross that mountain, they see the Geometry trek. Geometry is flatland as long as kids are constructing triangles and finding angles but all that changes when they start working with similarity and the theorems in Geometry. These diverse Math topics all move towards the same result. Our entire population of math-loving children is significantly reduced by the time they complete their school journey.

The whole journey till class 10 is a combination of peaceful flatland walks coupled with hill and mountain climbing. As parents and guardians, our awareness of the landscape will guide us to support our children and be empathetic with them at the right time.

Remember, climbing a hill gives them refreshments i.e. it improves their mathematical understanding in the long run and provides them with a downhill spurt i.e. increases the speed with which they pick up the later concepts . Skirting a hill, on the other hand, increases the time to get back to normal mathematics, makes the normal flatland walking more difficult and deprives them of refreshments that can help them in their future mathematical journey.

So, support your kids all the time but ensure that when they are climbing their hills and mountains in Mathematics, you are always around with a word of encouragement and a bottle of water.