Teachers urged not make mathematics scary

Accra, Sept. 8, GNA - A mathematics demonstration class for junior and senior secondary school students was on Monday organised with a call on teachers not to make the subject a scaring one for students.

Professor Sitsofi E. Anku, Founder and Executive Director for MathNED, a non-governmental organisation, that promotes the use of mathematics for national education development, who made the call in Accra, said students of today see the subject as very scary, therefore, have developed hatred for it.

The demonstration was the first of its kind after the launch of MathNED almost a month ago.

"Most of the ways and methods used by teachers today are wrong because they are applied without letting the students or pupils understand their concepts so they grow up to hate mathematics." Prof. Anku said there is the need to train teachers and students to appreciate and understand the conceptual methods and principles of the subject and develop the interest.

"This can be done if teachers are trained to adopt discovery activities in class to entice students to participate with interest," he said.

Professor Anku, who is a Professor of Mathematics at the Ashesi University in Accra, said mathematics has linkages with other subjects and every teacher ought to draw the line when teaching the subject to enable the student to grow to understand the nitty-gritty of the subject.

"The problem is not with mathematics, but the way we teach it. It is a simple subject but we make it look very difficult and make the children run away from it," he said.

Professor Anku said with proper use mathematics, the country would cut down drastically on expenditure and "many of these wastage could be handled to save the country billions of cedis".

He said for Ghana to excel in information and technology for development, there is the need to be conscious of the subject for the development of the nation. 08 Sept. 03