Why Do Filipino Students Hate Math
Why do Filipino students hate math? by jhay on June 16, 2009
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Yesterday, I expected the first meeting of my statistics class to be the start of a boring and tormented semester of taking another math subject. My hatred or lack of enthusiasm in math as a subject stems back to my high school days spent being humiliated in front of class by a teacher who forced us to do manual calculations in algebra and trigonometry!
“What?! After all of that all we get is zero?”
Plus, the experience of spending hours solving complex math problems only to end up getting zero as the value of x or y, though it was the correct answer, aggravated my frustration.
Things changed a little, for the better yesterday when our instructor in statistics started the semester addressing this proverbial question of why Filipino students hate math?
I forgot to take down notes so everything from here on is culled from my half-life memory, rest assured though that I’ll keep them as truthful as I can remember.
Going back, our instructor, the clever and ‘green’ guy from Mindanao started by quoting his research for his Master’s degree in which he allegedly found out that 70% of Filipino students hate math. Then he gave the following points in his way of answering that question posted earlier.
We separate the subject from everyday use/life/experience
Math, according to him, has been confined to the four corners of the classroom. It was seldom taught as something practical that can be used in daily life. Though I think it is, every time we count the things we want to buy, the money in our wallets, the amount of phone credits we have left etc. we use math. Basic math that is, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
But when talk of the values of x and y, the median of this, the value of pi raised to the second power, everything else seems to go south and these concepts seem so
X
Welcome Googler! If you find this page useful, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.
Yesterday, I expected the first meeting of my statistics class to be the start of a boring and tormented semester of taking another math subject. My hatred or lack of enthusiasm in math as a subject stems back to my high school days spent being humiliated in front of class by a teacher who forced us to do manual calculations in algebra and trigonometry!
“What?! After all of that all we get is zero?”
Plus, the experience of spending hours solving complex math problems only to end up getting zero as the value of x or y, though it was the correct answer, aggravated my frustration.
Things changed a little, for the better yesterday when our instructor in statistics started the semester addressing this proverbial question of why Filipino students hate math?
I forgot to take down notes so everything from here on is culled from my half-life memory, rest assured though that I’ll keep them as truthful as I can remember.
Going back, our instructor, the clever and ‘green’ guy from Mindanao started by quoting his research for his Master’s degree in which he allegedly found out that 70% of Filipino students hate math. Then he gave the following points in his way of answering that question posted earlier.
We separate the subject from everyday use/life/experience
Math, according to him, has been confined to the four corners of the classroom. It was seldom taught as something practical that can be used in daily life. Though I think it is, every time we count the things we want to buy, the money in our wallets, the amount of phone credits we have left etc. we use math. Basic math that is, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
But when talk of the values of x and y, the median of this, the value of pi raised to the second power, everything else seems to go south and these concepts seem so