TREATING MATHEMATICS ANXIETY

Nagrath offers a new approach for educators seeking to demystify math for anxious students.

Sheila Tobias, in her popular book Overcoming Math Anxiety (1978), first addressed a concern that bedevils students and educators to this day. Nagrath, the founder of the Elephant Learning Mathematics Academy (whose stated mission is to “empower children with mathematics”), opens his book by noting that American high school math proficiency scores are typically very low, even though subjects such as applied algebra, the core of computer programming, are important to many industries; he also asserts that honing math skills at an early age often leads to later success in higher education. His central proposition is to treat mathematics as a language, rather than as a series of columns and figures to be learned by rote; it’s an approach, he says, that resonates with parents, who likely learned math in a way that focused on memorization. Nagrath seeks to replace such unthinking approaches with tactics that are more firmly rooted in students’ psychology, and this thread is the book’s most engaging aspect. Nagrath writes evocatively about the Hero-Victim-Villain triangle that often organizes learning processes behind the scenes: “oftentimes, the student is in the Victim position on the drama triangle,” he writes. “In the Villain position, there could be another instructor, a peer, products, or even mathematics itself”; and he recommends getting “everyone off of the triangle and onto the same page.” His approach, laid out in clear and energetic language, refreshingly puts the focus on the learner, rather than on the subject matter, and on how such students can proactively work through anxiety. It’s a method that some readers may find to be revelatory.

A compassionate learning program that effectively reframes math worries.