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One of the biggest problem of maths education is that they are taught by people who dislike it. They think of maths as eating bitter medicine or training of a complex, rigid skill. The way maths is taught by them is clumsy and authoritarian, and this makes the students either passive or rebellious.

On a side note, recently the government of Manitoba in Canada removed requirement for maths teachers to take university maths courses. This is being pushed strongly by the education departments of university, which shows how much these maths teachers hate maths.

> On a side note, recently the government of Manitoba in Canada removed requirement for maths teachers to take university maths courses. This is being pushed strongly by the education departments of university, which shows how much these maths teachers hate maths.

That is messed up. Harsh. What is also messed up is that to become a math teacher, you have to go to teacher's college. That's one reason why I never became a teacher. I think I would do better than most at teaching (at least based on the comments I got in my student teacher reviews) but spending another two years at school is rather humiliating and costly.

I get what you're saying, but I think confidence is actually more important than enjoyment.

A lot of people confuse enjoying [x] with enjoying being good at [x]. This is why so many students switch subjects later on in life; when a field suddenly doesn't come naturally to them, they seek to play to their strengths elsewhere. Problems occur when they quit too early, and building confidence early on is important for stopping this.

In my experience, when you think you're bad at something, it's almost impossible to enjoy doing it, which makes preliminary mastery actually the first step to enjoyment and therefore downstream success.

Nah I disagree with that. Well, I do think confidence is useful BUT it only gets you so far. There are plenty of things I am "confident" in doing but don't really enjoy and after a while I just left them behind because they just don't provide a lot of enjoyment.

Any tips or anecdotes for us (well, me) about the fun things you'd do with students to encourage that joy?

I am not a PhD, but have done a fair bit of tutoring young people in maths. I feel similarly to you there, and am always on the lookout for new ways to foster that feeling of mathematics being fun and wonderful.

It can be hard. The feeling a lot of young people pick up - of maths being roughly akin to pointless abject suffering - is so strongly rooted in young people sometimes, and can be strongly connected to feelings of inadequacy and shame and so on.

Wrote that reply then clicked on your page to see if there were a blog or anything where you elaborate already on these topics - I've already read a couple of articles from your substack! Oops, hah, I did not realise I was writing to the person behind that.

I'd filed it away in my head as something to sink more time into when I've the emotional space to do so, but essentially I find it quite courageous to go against the grain in a world where it's perhaps harder and harder to do so. Everyone has a hot take, of course, but the hot takes are usually very much within the bounds of acceptable discourse.

Anyway, more power to you, in your endeavours.

Thank you very much.

Well, I think they key is I try and select topics that I find very fun, even they are a little off the beaten path. I know there's pressure to teach the curriculum, but honestly there are some cool things you can do with students if there's extra time that might get them hooked even if it's not in the curriculum, like:

1. Coloring maps (four color theorem) 2. Drawing curves and then looking for pathological ones (quadratic equations ...but more of an exploratory rather than methodological approach) 3. Infinite series (but just discuss some paradoxes people thought of centuries ago...) 4. Triangles on spheres

...if you don't make some of it extremely rigorous, there's a lot of basic facets of these things like the drawing aspect that can be quite fun. And TBH it makes sense to start there because mathematicians started out exploring these topics just with random calculations and doodles rather than rigorous proofs.

> Believe me, I've tutored a lot of people, many of which initially disliked math and found it difficult. But after a few tutoring sessions, I could see a little sparkle in their eye that said, "hey, this might be cool".

Exactly the same for me. Honestly, the satisfaction of seeing that "sparkle" in the eye of an initially unmotivated or discouraged student is probably among the most fulfilling moments of my professional career.

I learned math from a lady who would shout all the time, tell us we would amount to nothing and would throw a wooden chalkboard eraser at us.

How the hell can I teach myself to enjoy math?

Great comment, and applies to any activity we do. Seems like in western culture we're told to not have enjoyment, to work hard and grind, and that any bit of enjoyment means you're not trying hard enough and lacking. Much better to have the attitude of allowing the happiness to come from the actions.

This post is quite rude and dismissive to people who enjoy math but struggle with it.

I've been told that the secret to exercise, woodworking, playing the piano, whatever is to "enjoy it." But, having or getting the skill to have some successes to "enjoy it" is difficult and not everyone has the ability to get to that level. Just sticking with something or worse, fooling oneself that more effort will lead to good results is annoying to hear if one doesn't have ability. We can't all succeed at everything.

Why? Can you elaborate what you find so offensive?

I don't think it's offensive, but it may be frustrating advice for people who cannot enjoy math at all.

That might be true but then I don't think people should pursue things they don't enjoy in the first place.