Why Students Dislike Math

After a while of getting to know classes, and learning more about the subjects they may take, students often end up split into groups depending on a subject they seem to like: most notably, Math or English. However, no matter where students are placed, most seem to steer away from math, why is that?

Well, students may not take a liking to math due to how difficult some aspects of math can be. Compared to other subjects, math is most normally taught in a strict way compared to other subjects, like history or English. 

Science may be a math focused class, however, with the way science is taught, with more hands-on experiences like experiments and interesting projects, it often appeals to students. Math on the other hand is taught with worksheets and either hand written or video notes that may not catch a student’s attention and liking as much.

Some students may feel a sense of frustration and embarrassment during their math lessons when they get an answer wrong or think they have done terrible work.

Unlike in other classes where students can easily spot where things might have gone wrong, math may make students look through the beginning to end to spot what they don’t understand. 

Ysabelle Ferreyra (9) said, “I don’t like math because after long division they lost me.” 

Losing or messing up in math can be so much more difficult than losing a spot in another subject because it can take frustratingly long amounts of time to fix or even discover the mistake. For me, math makes it feel like I have learned one thing, only to have to do that thing in a completely different way or else I am wrong. 

  This doesn’t mean all students cannot or do not like math. Some students agree that math is enjoyable and fun when the students actually know how or what it is that they are doing. If teachers can provide extra resources to help teach students or find interesting ways to engage students’ attention spans, with things like group work, and maybe more visual examples to help better understand the topic, I believe it will lessen the number of students who do not like math. 

Students may have a small distaste for math due to how much a struggle certain concepts they must learn can be, especially given how each year it seems students must learn everything faster than they did the last year in order to accomplish or meet certain standards, 

However, math is not all that bad for some. Some students quite enjoy math and may even enjoy it more than other subjects. It all depends on the students’ likes and dislikes, nothing is a sure guarantee, just because one student likes and understands a subject really well another student could be the complete opposite and dislike the subject and not understand anything the subject may include.