An example of students’ negativity to mathematics, according to Swan (2004, p. 2), was a question asked of four students aged nine and their teacher, ‘if Mathematics were a food, what would it be and why?’ The replies were typified by one student who said, ‘Mathematics is like chocolate cake – because if you have too much you will get sick.’ A more disconcerting response – as this was from the teacher – was: ‘Mathematics is like a rat sack – because it makes you haemorrhage from inside out.’ I find it difficult to imagine why someone should be afraid of maths because I absolutely love this subject. Maybe this is because I grew up in a family where maths played a substantial part in our daily lives, so much so that my father read me calculus books while I lay in my cot. My father in his occupation assessed the components of steel to decide its annealing (heat treatment that makes it more malleable), and was fascinated by numbers, a fascination I continue to embrace.
I realised that others were afraid of maths when, as a student teacher, I undertook a micro-teaching session with my peer group and four students voiced their fear of maths at various times during this session. One student said she was hit on her knuckles when she answered a calculation incorrectly. This made me feel that as a teacher, I could change this negative approach by making maths both fun and empowering. This realisation gave me the impetus to do my MA education dissertation on the ‘Fear of Maths’.
