What Schools Call Mathematics Isn’t Mathematics
Math.
A subject, an unusual one, but one that stays in a student's mind for the rest of his life, either with admiration or deep resentment. Most people fall into the latter group, primarily due to the way it is taught since a young age. The fault is not entirely in the student's mind. What schools call math isn't math at all.
As an Indian, based on what I have observed, math = arithmetic for 70 - 75% of all people (and that is an understatement).
To understand what I am saying, go to any person and ask what comes to their mind when they hear "mathematics," and most will imagine the holy trinity - Numbers, Calculations, and Formulas.
Only a few think of creativity, or beauty, or exploration.
Now, this is again not the student's fault but the education system's. Students are 'required' to memorize tables from 2-10 before grade 2, the formulas for area and perimeter before grade 5, the quadratic equation in grade 9 along with trigonometric ratios, and so on.
Students are never told why they work that way or how it is derived (sometimes even derivations are told to be memorized), and this essentially sucks out all curiosity, since such questions are almost certainly shunned. No one truly appreciates the beauty and structure of such equations due to this. Ergo, math becomes a ritual:
The most infuriating part of this is that students never encounter real math in the first place. All of this is simply arithmetic in disguise.
The one mistake to rule them all:
Although the most infuriating aspect of all this melodrama, the one infuriating aspect to rule them all, is one for which students themselves are to be blamed. It starts with a seemingly innocent and curiousity driven question: "When will I use this in real life?"
This explicitly conveys an underlying, disturbing fact about modern education.
It shows that knowledge is no longer seen as something inherently beautiful or intellectually enriching.
It must regardless justify itself via utility.
Music and Art are never questioned this way. Nor is literature, which survives despite having no universal measureable "use." Yet mathemematics and natural sciences is constantly placed on this trial.
Students, usually being obstinate individuals, never sway away from their perception of mathematics being viewed as academic labor since it is treated as a transactional tool for exams, jobs and salaries, when it is supposedly the language of patterns and structures.
To conclude, take a look at this 'ugly' equation:
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