Mathophobia?

    On the second day of class of MAT107, we were given a test. None of the students were aware that they were going to be given a test on this day, nor did we know what was going to be on it. As the suspense built among the curious minds of students, we were told that we could turn over our tests. To our surprise, the test was entitled: Quiz: Are You A Mathophobe? Personally, I was in utter confusion, I asked myself, “what is a mathophobe?”

    The questions that were printed onto the front page were of personal questions. Yet again I was confused, but this time I did not know why I was being asked about my “math information”. There were silly questions such as your feelings about taking the quiz, remembering phone numbers, and math participation. It turned out, these were questions that were testing the amount of fear I had when it came to math, known as mathophobia. My results stated that math was in my comfort zone, following it gave a short explanation of what my supposed feelings are about math. So apparently, after using these statistics, I am not a mathophobe.

    I visited multiple sites about mathophobia. I tried to find the number of people who were mathophobes, but I was unable to do so. But I did find a lot of interesting information. A document written by Diane Resek and William H. Rupley contains facts about people who were classified to have mathophobia. It mentions people who are very educated in certain areas are more likely to struggle in subjects related to math; there are fewer people who have the “mysterious insight who 'get it'”. According to Lazarus, he defines mathophobia as “an irrational and impeditive dread of mathematics”. This sounds like something I would not want to be familiar with in any way. Meaning it sounds horrible, like an unsolvable math function that you have been working on for days to finally realize the product is undefined.


http://www.jstor.org/pss/3482291

    While searching, I also found a woman's blog about mathophobia, but this blog is concerning mathophia for children. In her first paragraph she goes on to say that there is a time and age to start learning how to walk, how to read, how to ride a bike, ect.. Then she states, when but is it the time to learn math, and for that matter, create a mathophobia? Looking back on my experiences with math, I was never afraid of math. I always enjoyed getting all of the right answers on tests, raising my hand in class and shouting the answer to the class. It never was a problem for me.

    I helped student teach and worked with students this past year in a kindergarten classroom in the elementary school in my school district. Some of the days, we worked with math, using math squares, like the ones we used in class to learn the basic rules of bases, and other counting materials. There were some children who were very strong in this subject, but there were others who shied away from the crowd when it was time for a math session. So, even at this age, there were students who were not willing to learn math and wanted nothing to do with it. A few students even became frustrated because they were unable to keep up with the rest of the class. I wonder if the students who were reluctant to learn math will eventually create a mathophobia?


http://moreofamom.com/2008/07/20/math-club-the-cure-for-mathophobia/