Shad’s Blog for Week #3
(Part 1)
There is now convincing research to suggest that the highly anxious person who exerts himself/herself excessively over a problem, uses smaller areas of the brain. By contrast, the relaxed un-rushed person who approaches a problem calmly employs larger areas of her/his brain. High-strung, distraught minds, rushing to complete their tasks battle emotional demons like worry, fear, anxiety and guilt, leaving less brain-power to attend to the problem at hand. Which is why tense, anxious people who feel very pressured take longer to solve a problem and often make more errors. Their more relaxed peers with their calm and collected minds have larger segments of the brain available to turn a cerebral problem over in their heads, enabling them to reach correct solutions quickly.
Math anxiety is a well documented phenomena. Much of the literature on the subject silently acknowledges Math to be intrinsically “difficult” and therefore naturally prone to induce anxiety. Symptoms of anxiety can be traced by children to their own parents first e.g. Johnny notices that Mom refers only Math problems to Dad, who in turn refers it to Johnny’s teacher. Later, Johnny notices that his own Math anxiety is reflected in a majority of students in his class. As a result, an unimpeachable truth gets permanently entrenched in his mind: Math is mysteriously difficult. Even adults like Mom and Dad feel jittery around it.
The difficulty does not, however, lie in the intrinsic nature of Math as a discipline. Far from it. More often, it is creative design (or the lack of it) in conventional Math teaching and materials that determines the levels of difficulty experienced by Mom, Dad and Johnny. Students, even teachers, who use traditional teaching approaches and materials have to struggle to make un-explained connections. Often, students do it entirely on their own, sometimes several grades later, via hindsight. When consulting a Math text-book, or listening to a class-teacher’s explanation, they have to switch to peak levels of concentration to grasp some of the mathematical ideas being explained. This is because Math concepts are illustrated minimally, using implicit, highly formal language.
Learners and teachers (quite unknowingly) contend with basic limitations in design in the delivery of Math concepts, operations and applications. Admirably, though, a few teachers compensate for these limitations by developing highly creative and imaginative activities to unravel central ideas or connections in Math learning. Doing this demands among other things, a display of incandescent passion, intense motivation and a curious absorption with Math on the part of the teacher. These attributes are sometimes borrowed from untapped reserves within the teacher, or role-modeled or simply acted out as best as one can.
Often, exceptional high-energy integrated-learning engagements that promote team member’s interactions among each other (to assimilate Math ideas properly), can create an intimidating learning environment. Both teacher and “bright” students charge such group sessions with a kind of competitive energy that can be anxiety-inducing (or simply off-putting) for those barely managing to keep up. On the other hand, students may be exposed to an equally dreaded alternative: a teacher standing by the board blissfully disconnected from his/her students, pointing and explaining, making poorly designed doodles and expecting tuned-out students to exert maximum attention throughout their sterile, disinterested silence.
Design flaws or limitations, have consequences that are strikingly similar in any situation. Just imagine for a minute that all cars have steering wheels that loosen and tighten unexpectedly whenever one turns the steering wheel. Such a “normally accepted” feature (not flaw!) creates a unique set of attention demands for drivers. With practice, the astute driver might discern a curious, (but unreliable), pattern in the whimsical behavior of the steering wheel e.g. on smooth roads it tightens when rotated clockwise. On slightly bumpy roads it tightens when rotated anti-clockwise.
Paying attention to such supplementary learning becomes part of the driver’s repertoire of good driving skills. When roads alternate unpredictably between smooth and not-so-smooth, all drivers would have to summon peak attention levels just to exercise normal caution. Not surprisingly, learning to drive a vehicle that behaves so inconsistently would be very stressful. Even after mastering the skill, drivers would continue feeling terribly stressed out while chatting with a companion seated alongside. Navigating on auto-pilot would court certain disaster. Furthermore, avoiding accidents (a problem-solving activity) would require a separate, considerably higher level of training. This is now harder because a smaller area of the brain would be activated towards avoiding accidents while a large portion of the brain would be managing anxiety, worry and fear due to the inherently stressful nature of driving itself. A chilling thought.
And yet no one would be surprised to see a majority of student learners perform poorly on driving tests. They would explain such large-scale failure using the principle demonstrated by the statistical bell-curve: i.e. in any given population anywhere, smart people will always be in the minority; the majority are always average and not-so-smart. Therefore only a small minority can be good drivers. The rest will have to (a) work harder or (b) seek special assistance. Part II to be continued next week.
Stay tuned!
Shad