why do students hate maths?

Most students do not like maths. They find themselves in a maths class since it is a compulsory subject or a common unit that the institution requires you to pursue for you to graduate. The fact that majority of students, especially those pursuing arts and humanities based courses, do not see the relevance of maths in the future career should be a great concern to facilitators of learning. Is the knowledge, skills and attitudes that can be acquired through learning mathematics relevant to the future life of a person? Is learning new knowledge, acquiring new skills or attitudes really important to a lawyer, a psychologist, a theologian etc? That is one of the questions the students of such programs plus their lecturers, always ask. The negative attitude towards maths from early ages in the learning institutions may be a reason for such arguments, not forgetting the level of ignorance.

The lack of shortcut to solutions of maths problems may be a major discouragement to such students and lecturers. If say it is a linear system, it either have a unique solution, many solutions or no solution, but you have to prove beyond doubt that it is either of the three. This is unlike in some scenarios in the humanities or arts where a problem may have many solutions, depending on whoever is talking. A person may put forward a case and always assume to be right as per his own justification. Alternatively differing camps may arrive at a consensus even if the problem is still unsolved. This can be attested by the way politicians agree on certain political issues. The problem is never solved, but if they were to think mathematically or scientifically then there is a high likelihood that the problem wont reoccur. Unfortunately most of these politicians lack a strong mathematics (scientific) reasoning.

Hence a student will sit in a maths class so as to get the right grades and finish his degree and thereafter supposedly go out in the world and make money. That thinking is normally captured by newspaper articles on how a billionaire  makes a lot of money and yet he dropped out of the education system. They wrongly assume that the only ultimate goal of school learning is the ability to make money. Hence if a learning experience is seen to be an obstacle to finalize my education journey to that goal, then it is not important. Maths is often a victim since you cannot break its laws and appreciating the working of these laws require patience. This thinking kills the essence and the beauty of learning and moreso learning maths: the logics in maths.

Some fundamental problems that afflict our society can easily be sorted out if people understand simple laws of (maths) nature. For example, water follows its course, it always find its own level. Even in traditional African societies we had sayings that echos this simple but complicated law. Most of our roads are in pathetic condition simply because the 'engineers' did not really comprehend the implication of gravitational forces, laws  governing fluid flows, vector laws among others while constructing roads. A murram road can withstand harsh wet conditions for a long time if it is engineered well. An engineer who can forego shortcuts and stick to the laid rules can leap big in the long run than the shortcuts of corruption. What joy will you get if you leave in luxury but not in peace since you fear your poor neighbour will mug you? Good well constructed and maintained earth/murram roads that are far cheaper than tarmac roads can change the lives of many poor people as they wait for tarmac roads.

These are laws that directly or indirectly can be captured by those who like maths, and by a keen facilitator of maths learning. A system that requires a unique solution has no shortcuts. For a system to be balance, it needs the right inputs/variables. To avoid conflict of whatever nature, all the systems must be in tandem with each other. Learning of whatever kind must be seen to add value to the learner. There is no learning that is useless, otherwise it is not learning. Such values should be capture very early in the cycle of learning. The mentality of waiting to 'use' knowledge after graduating, almost 16 - 20 years of education is disservice to oneself and humanity in general. It is paramount to teach history such that an individual can appreciate the impact of knowledge, skills and attitudes throughout man's history of growth and development. As a student, one should strive to diligently inquire the relevance of such knowledge and skills without bias in-spite of his weakness of the same. Anything that is, is important, the fact that you do not see its importance not withstanding.