STUDENT FACTORS

In the previous entry, I talked about the home environment and parental factors. Today, I am turning my attention to students' attitude towards learning of math.

Having developed learned helplessness from parents or siblings with regard to math and basic English, some of the students become permanently handicapped in these subjects. It is sometimes very difficult to change such minds. Some people think the inability to do math is imprinted in their genes. Very, very, false! It is basically the bad attitude developed towards the study of math. If a student always come to class with the notion that math is "not for me" or "as for me I cannot do math", the brain picks up this message and it becomes a reality. The student develops thought-block to the subject. Nothing can change this except this person renews the mind by speaking and thinking positively. Every one has the potential to succeed and if he/she works hard at it.  The person has to try, try, try again and success will definitely come.

Poor study habits accounts for a large part of this problem. If students devote few hours to studying math, how can they succeed in it? From my experience and evaluations, the average number of hours that students put into studying math is about three hours per week. To me, this is simply not adequate for mastering math.

Some students also want to do the barest minimum to pass classes. They will only do the assigned home work and nothing else. Bad, bad, bad, behavior! They think by doing just the home work, they will be successful. This may work in some classes where the instructor just models the test problems after the home work. Again bad instructors who fail to challenge students! We will discuss this later - about instructors who just pass students. Shame, shame, shame! You are contributing to the production of graduates who cannot handle simple math problems. I call these students functional illiterates. They come out of the schools and they cannot pass basic entrance exams into various programs or careers. What a disservice done to this generation?

One particular year, I was impressed with a student from Sri Lanka who was so excellent. When you assign odd numbered problems, she would do both the odd and even ones for you. She almost always had perfect scores. She was a model student. She always went beyond the call of duty. There is certainly no other way to become excellent except through constant and many, many practices. The brain has to be exercised to make it function faster when it comes to calculations and any other thing in life.

Also students who are sleep-deprived tend to fall back in class. Those who stay awake for long hours playing video games or long hours of work fall asleep in class so they fail to grasp the concepts. They are unable to score well on exams. If this continues for a long time, they become frustrated and give up all together. They begin to think math is not for them. They fail to realize that they can make some changes to their lifestyles to be able to succeed.