I will always hold dear the memory of certain people in my life that encouraged me to read and learn in ingenious and inspiring ways. But as far back as I can remember, some teachers were responsible for making me develop a profound fear of math and all related subjects such as geometry, trigonometry etc.
Being more artistic and linguistic, I was always slower than the rest of the class in understanding math and getting to grips with anything to do with complicated calculations. Much later, I found out that I was slightly dyslexic with numbers. Keeping in mind that I am speaking about an era where using calculators was totally forbidden in schools, and even when we could, they were very basic and not like the sophisticated ones students use nowadays.
When I was in elementary school in New York, the young math teacher could not be bothered nor did she have patience to help me understand math better. Instead, she ridiculed me in front of my classmates when I made mistakes or didn’t understand a point. From then on because of that insensitive teacher I dreaded math. But that was just the start, and my bad luck with math teachers continued in various countries and schools.
In Sudan, I attended a private school, which despite having a stellar reputation for being the best school in Khartoum, enforced very strict rules and corporal punishment was the norm (even though it was officially banned by the government). Until the 6th grade, classes were segregated — boys in one room, girls in another, and we still had the odd male teacher. One particular math teacher was, to me, no less frightening than the devil himself. He was very pale, very skinny and very unapproachable with scrutinizing eyes that shone in contempt for his students behind thick-rimmed eyeglasses.
Any mistakes, any subordination real or perceived, was punishable — and not by making us stand in the corner or do detention. He had this long, thick and menacing wooden ruler with a sharp steal edge, to whack the offending pupil’s open palms or backside as hard as possible. Many tears were shed silently in the classroom as no one dared to cry out loud.
He knew very well that I had just moved from the US and that I had to catch up. He also knew how terrified I was. However, he made it quite clear to me that if I wanted to learn math his way real quick and actually pass exams that I would have to hire him to tutor me at home. Not wanting to incur his wrath in any way, I talked to my father and he came to tutor me at home once or twice a week. Still, even on a one-on-one basis, he terrified me with his unkind demeanor. Eventually I passed the exams but I still hated math more than ever!
From Sudan we moved back home to Jeddah, where I began middle school. Of course I had to adjust to a different social and educational environment yet again, but that’s another story. At the time, back in the 70s, the way we were taught had nothing to do with actually exercising our brains, and more with memorizing every bit of information by heart, even if we didn’t understand it all. We were graded according to how faithfully we stuck to what was written in our schoolbooks — literally. This method was even used for teaching math, geometry and algebra. So I passed the exams with decent grades, but I still didn’t really have a handle on math, it was still the top of the list of my least favorite subjects.
Finally, what made me totally despise math and all related subjects, and fail miserably at it, was when we moved to the UK. I was 16-year-old, and once again, I had to quickly adjust to a totally alien educational system and try to catch up with the rest of the students my age — a traumatic period for me to say the least. At the time, the education system in the UK was far more difficult and more complicated than it is now. I could not be enrolled into a ‘normal’ school and so I was advised to enroll in a tutorial school. These small private tutorial schools and colleges are set up for British and foreign students that needed to catch up, improve or retake exams.
The first tutorial school I was enrolled in was a small institution that took up half a floor in an office block on Victoria Street. It was owned and run by a group of retired, (some dysfunctional, ineffectual or just simply too old) teachers, with the occasional part timers.
Of course just my luck — our math teacher, was a portly 80-year-old man, who mumbled and constantly took little naps during our lessons, poor old chap. So, not only did I have to put up with that, but also math the British way, was far more difficult and far more advanced to what I had been taught in Saudi Arabia. It was a total nightmare for me, but my only comfort was that I was not the only one suffering in the class. However, the clever girls got extra tutoring from cool teachers at home, but I didn’t want to burden my parents with further tuition fees, so I kept quiet, hating every minute of it — needless to add that I did not pass any of my math exams. I loathed the subject more than ever — I simply had had enough and the rest is history.
My point is thus: not all kids develop learning skills at the same time, and not all students find it easy to learn math, just as some find difficulty in reading and writing. Seriously, I think teachers should be assessed not only for their knowledge of the subject they are asked to teach, to find out if they have what it takes to educate but also to be evaluated psychologically, as well as their people’s skills. What and how we are educated when young, can affect our whole lives, during our educational journey and later on in our careers. Don’t you agree?
On the other hand, as one of my dear friends put it: maybe I am very bad at math simply because I don’t have the brains for it! Needless to say, we are no longer on speaking terms.
