Math Anxiety and Its Negative Implications

What is Math Anxiety? There are many definitions to this, but to keep things simple, I would define it as an emotionally unpleasant feeling inside a person that will hinder the learning process. Everyone has a certain amount of it but differs in the way it is managed.

Why is the anxiety in math stronger than other subject? It may be due to the fact that answer to a math question is clear cut in nature. It is a straight forward correct or incorrect; a direct exposure to weakness or strength in that subject. This is not so for others, like Literature, where the answer is mostly open-ended and subjective in nature.

This math anxiety causes a person to dislike math, since the guilt of failing to solve a math question causes him to loss his self-esteem and pride. He may feel that he is being isolated by the rest. This bad feeling spirals and further reduces his chance of succeeding with math. With worsening math performance, his attitude towards learning of math deteriorates fast and may reach a stage where he finally cannot perform simple math calculation.

This anxiety would therefore hinder his learning pattern towards math and leaves him helpless, fearful and worried. To him there is no more enjoyment in the learning of math. What will he do next? Avoid math with all means!

Avoidance of math is a step backwards and it will reveal its ugly face when the person moves on in life. For example, he may be at a disadvantaged position during job application. With increasing demand of the job industries, avoiding math is definitely detrimental. Math is seen by many employers as the ability to think logically in order to solve a set of real-life problems and this is the skill necessary to do any job well.

To avoid math due to math anxiety has further negative effect. It causes fear in any topics related to math, be it statistical control studies (need for handling raw data), computer programming (computation of numbers by software) or simple technical drafting (geometry dimensioning). Skill learning will be slowed down.

Therefore to conclude, even though learning of math is different from other subject, it can be fun and interesting if failure can be accepted as part of learning. This will turn the fearful math anxiety into constructive learning with an attitude change. Love math and math will love you.

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