Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, and Neurosciences with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow and Chief Investigator with the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision.
Why do kids find maths boring?
Guest Author: Professor Michael Milford
I didn’t care about politics when I was a kid because I didn’t think it affected me — it simply wasn’t my reality.
The same can be said for kids and mathematics. Many find it boring or irrelevant because many of the reasons why maths is important only become apparent later in life.
So how is maths interesting and relevant to young people? That is the question!
As a father of two, I’m very invested in making sure my kids, and as many other young people, are equipped with the scientific literacy required to critically analyse the constant stream of information from the media, politicians, governments and companies.
How are they going to make informed decisions about the things that affect them if they don’t know the fundamentals of how the decisions are being made?
My job as a parent is to empower my children with the skills to be productive, contributing members of the community, and to productively question what is going on in the world.
I have met many parents who worry about this stuff but are often overwhelmed or daunted by the challenge of trying to understand modern technological issues and the underlying science.
So I started using STEM to reign it back in.
A tale of two coding issues
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. There are also other versions including STEAM (Arts), STEMM (Medicine) and STREAM (Robotics).
As a Professor in Robotics, I lead interdisciplinary research at the boundary between robotics, neuroscience and computer vision.
I use STEM disciplines every day to work with robots but I also use the fundamentals of each to break down what’s going on around me and better understand the world.
On the topic of my kids’ future, I see two distinct issues:
1. A rapidly-growing number of jobs require STEM proficiency or competency.
2. A growing debate (in Australia) about whether we should teach coding in schools.
My assertion is that not everyone will be active coders in their future lives. Does this mean we don’t need to teach the basics of coding — most definitely not!
Everyone will need to understand the basics so they prosper in a world shaped by technologies built on coding.
I like to use an analogy around cars. Most people today can’t fix a car, but do understand the basics of how a car works, so that they know what action to take if they hear a loud bang (blown tyre) or the car stops (potentially out of fuel).
The same goes for mathematics. If a politician wants to spend my tax dollars, I can use my maths toolkit to decide if it’s a legitimate and well-costed strategy or an empty platitude and play for votes.
Remember Cambridge Analytica? The data analytics firm that mined Facebook profiles without permission then used that information to target voters and swing elections?
The population was savvy enough to take influential action.
Even if you’re not working in a STEM field you at least need basic understanding and skillset in these areas, or you are at a massive disadvantage.
We’ve seen that play out time and time again with other technologies like computers, the internet and smart phones.
Exacerbation of disadvantage and inequity have occurred in recent years with increasingly technologically-based services like health.
Having a savvy population is incredibly important for individuals as well as the whole.
So, what are kids interested in? I can’t believe it’s not maths.
I’m on a STEM literacy mission targeting the ‘uninterested’ population.
With my own children, I can tutor them at home if they’re struggling with STEM subjects, but what about children in other families?
Maths can fast become boring because it’s often too abstract and doesn’t relate to a kid’s current everyday experience.
Everyone has interests — things they feel passionate about.
Learning how to budget and buy a car or house just isn’t on most of their radars, even though as adults we know this will be very important later in their lives.
Making maths relevant to young kids is about tapping into their interests. What is their reality? What are they exposed to every day?
Well, I would argue that entertainment and social media is the reality of many kids in today’s world.
Young people today are passionate consumers of social media, movies and books, to name a few. Entertainment captures a significant amount of their time and attention.
Build educational opportunities from pop culture
Education has fascinated me since the late 90s. In fact, in 2000 I published an informal maths textbook “Not a C Minus” that became a local best seller in Queensland and then around Australia.
I’m the first to admit that text is probably still a bit dry for kids. I’ve refined my approach since then.
These days, I focus on K-12 and adult learning through my educational startup Math Thrills Pty Ltd.
My company is doing something a little different by making maths a seamless part of entertainment.
In 2017, we developed a STEM Storybook series of early childhood books to capture kids’ interest through illustrated stories.
A successful Kickstarter campaign, investment funding from QUT Bluebox and support from the AMP Foundation meant we could distribute thousands of these books for free around Australia.
Since then, Math Thrills has evolved to a K-12 range, including the Code Bravo novel for young adults, which is stealthily filled with mathematical concepts and accompanied by a Maths in Fiction textbook.
The books are designed to be fun and easy to use, link to curriculum and engage different types of learners through multiple learning modalities including picture books, illustrated guides, young adult fiction, online animations, blockbuster entertainment reviews and workshops in which we act out scenarios from the movies.
To inspire the masses, my team taps into mainstream entertainment by working with movie studio reps to analyse the latest releases and present public talks on how realistic the Hollywood scenarios are based on mathematical realities.
So far we’ve used a series of Conversation articles to pick apart The Predator, The Meg, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Solo: A Star Wars Story; Avengers: Infinity War; Pacific Rim Uprising; Thor: Ragnarok; Terminator 2 in 3D; Spider-Man: Homecoming; The Mummy; Pirates of the Caribbean 5; Alien: Covenant, and Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2.
We also share the magic of maths through pub-science public talks, TEDx, universities, schools, the World Science Festival and professional development and education conferences.
Self-assessment
At some stage you want people to put two and two together — to realise they learned some maths through entertainment and to realise it is beneficial and be open to doing it again.
Maths Thrills is still a bit too young for longitudinal studies, but our qualitative scores indicate we’re on the right track. Student engagement surveys of the workshops we run are positive.
We’ve also had plenty of robust criticism and feedback along the way, which we’ve taken on-board — making the books more socially inclusive including along gender lines, and removing some of the more edgy or sensitive material based on common movie plot lines, as well as other improvements.
As we scale up we intend to bring on a team member who can focus on pedagogy but, for now, we’ve set the bar at keeping students from running out of the room, especially in challenging school environments. Small steps.
Nerf guns and code-cracking, beeping devices work quite well with that. It’s been particularly fulfilling to have so called ‘school rejector’ students cradling some of our learning props and really engaging in the workshops.
As educators, if we get the occasional complaint from a kid who says, “I see this working in the movie but wouldn’t a better example have been from real life…” — we’ve achieved our goal. That’s an amazing outcome we love to hear.
Our aim is to make ourselves irrelevant as mediators of maths education. That would be fantastic.
Don’t despair. Learning is not a sometimes food.
As I mentioned, most people probably aren’t going to be coders but they will need to understand how coding works to prosper.
One of the best things a parent can do for their child is help them understand you don’t stop learning when you finish school.
Even the most skilled people acquire knowledge throughout their lives — the job scene alone is always changing.
If you are a parent and found education and tutoring hasn’t worked, there are other ways to help your kids engage in learning, such as through hobbies and interests.
And it can be a game of patience.
Many people are put off by education in their early years but come back in their later years, so don’t despair if they don’t get it the first time.
Lifelong learning is completely normal in today’s modern world.
Older learners may not have quite the elastic brains of youths, but this is balanced out by a tendency to be more motivated, focused learners with life experience that emphasizes the importance of learning.
One of the pleasant surprises with our artificial intelligence for kids book has been the interest of adults and even grandparents, who get to learn alongside their grandchildren.
