3 ways to reduce math anxiety, and beauty is at the center of them all
A Classical Educators approach to math
Dear Reader of The Dean’s List,
The other day I posted a light-hearted video of a cat struggling with math calculations (you can watch it here for a little chuckle). But the reality is that reports continue to show much of today’s generation deals with a continued increase in anxiety over mathematics.
The Nation’s Report Card consistently shows there has been no improvement in math test scores for decades. Is the problem math anxiety? Or is it simply in how the math is being taught?
Two things we care about around here are education and history. They’re uniquely intertwined. In today’s post, we’re exploring math education and the clues given by history in how math anxiety could be overcome.
Enjoy the mathematical version of history class!
~Dean Bowen
3 ways to reduce math anxiety and beauty is at the center of them all
Math anxiety is a real thing.
When I was teaching middle school several years ago, I had a particular student who struggled with math anxiety. After enduring weeks of negative self-talk, she finally broke down into tears, claiming she just couldn’t do math.
She wasn’t alone. Students have been experiencing a love/hate relationship with math for decades; maybe you’ve experienced it yourself?
The survey says
A recent survey conducted by Prodigy Education, found that 30% of teachers have observed their students experiencing some form of math anxiety every single day. Those are big numbers.
A significantly larger proportion, 46%, said they see it weekly. A lesser amount, 21%, said they notice it monthly.
All total, 97% of teachers say they’ve watched their students go through some form of math anxiety at least on a monthly basis. Those numbers are astounding!
According to the survey, 64% of teachers first begin to notice signs of math anxiety in students as young as 1st grade. One in ten even see it as early as kindergarten. The signs can include talking negative to one’s self, avoiding homework, and procrastinating assignments.
Unfortunately, the survey revealed that only 31% of teachers feel “adequately trained to help students cope with math anxiety.”
I can relate. I didn’t feel prepared when my student broke down into tears. I knew she wasn’t the only student who felt that way, and I feared she would cause a chain reaction of tears throughout the entire classroom!
On an impulse, and mostly because I didn’t know what else to do, I began to make up a song about how she was actually good at math. She began to smile and giggle a little.
I knew she had a very good singing voice, and everyone was about to learn that I did not. My hope was that she would see I was still going to sing, even though I wasn’t very good at it, and maybe she could do the same with math.
She got the point, but also, more importantly, her confidence began to improve. She turned out to be very good at math. I would say I got lucky with my intervention, but I was certainly not prepared for the moment.
Is math therapy the answer?
The Prodigy Survey asked parents and teachers if Math Therapy could be the solution to math anxiety. Of the parents polled, 43% said they would “support introducing their child to a math therapist.”
The survey also noted that “Many teachers think therapy may be a promising solution to help students overcome math anxiety and improve performance. Their insights reveal how structured emotional support could boost students’ confidence and provide much-needed help beyond traditional instruction.”
Confidence is certainly an important characteristic to have when it comes to math, but traditional instruction which includes an approach taken by classical education cannot be overstated. A classical education believes and teaches that math is beauty, and it’s interwoven with, and the very foundation of, music, nature, and art.
The beauty of music
For example, in classical education, we talk a lot about Pythagoras. In the first millennium BC, he made an interesting observation pertaining to math and music. As he was wandering past a blacksmith’s forge, he noticed something that amazed him. The clanging of hammers would emit a certain harmony that was strangely pleasing to his ears.
Upon further investigation, he realized that one hammer precisely twice as heavy as the other produced a harmonious sound when banged in unison against the metal.
He concluded that a 2:1 weight ratio produces an octave. He also noted that a 3:2 ratio creates a perfect fifth, and he further noted that a 4:3 ratio makes a perfect fourth. His discovery would later evolve into the musical scale we use today.
In addition to musical harmony being created by the weight of various objects, Pythagoras also discovered something similar in the length of a string. He realized that a note’s pitch is inversely proportional to the length of the string that produces it.
Pythagoras had made the brilliant discovery that certain sounds become harmonious together because of a mathematical relationship between them. Math, then, is intricately linked with and to the beauty of music.
The beauty of nature
Music is only one example of math being tied to beauty. The Golden ratio is another.
In 1202, an Italian merchant’s son named Leonardo of Pisa, who we know as Fibonacci, published a book called Liber Abaci (The Book of Calculation). In that book he revealed a series of calculations based upon a thought experiment of pairs of reproducing rabbits wherein each number in the sequence is the sum of the two before it.
The resulting series — 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144... — is what we now call the Fibonacci Sequence. Interestingly, as the numbers continue to grow, the ratio between each number and the one before it emerges towards the Golden Ratio of phi.
3 / 2 = 1.5
5 / 3 ≈ 1.666
8 / 5 = 1.6
13 / 8 ≈ 1.625
21 / 13 ≈ 1.615
34 / 21 ≈ 1.619
However, the true beauty is that the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Sequence are often seen in nature.
One famous example is the sunflower. If you were to count the spirals of seeds radiating out from the center of a sunflower, you’d often find Fibonacci numbers like 34, 55, or 89. The same can be said for pinecones and pineapples. The Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio can even be found in hurricanes and galaxies.
The creative logic behind this pattern is genius. For example, in the sunflower it optimizes space by maximizing sunlight absorption, and in the pineapple it does so by packing its seeds tightly.
Because of this logistical beauty, we can see that math is more than just equations. Some have called it the very language of God.
The beauty of Art
Da Vinci created the illustrations for the book “De Divina Proportione” (The Divine Proportion) by Luca Pacioli. In the book, Pacioli describes mathematical and artistic proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in art and architecture.
Da Vinci’s use of the Divine proportion, as it was called in his day, is evident in some of his most famous works including “The Annunciation,” “The Last Super,” and the “Vitruvian Man.”
The beauty of math
This is how math used to be taught during the Renaissance; as a foundational element of beauty. Through math, beauty could be measured.
When math is taught from this classical perspective, it tends to take upon itself a different tone.
The age-old math question we hear from students is this: “When am I every going to use this?”
When these same students experience the beauty hidden within the math, they stop asking these questions. Awe and wonder return. Math becomes less of a utilitarian tool to be used, and more of a wonderful language to be enjoyed.
In most places, math is no longer taught this way. If more schools took this classical approach, perhaps we would stop wondering if math therapy was the answer to our problems. Perhaps the answer has been beauty all along.
Like you, we care deeply about the accurate retelling of history and properly infusing it into education in order to leave a positive mark on culture.
By becoming a paid subscriber, you are contributing to that effort. Thank you.
Paid subscribers receive the following:
Full-length articles every Wednesday and Saturday
Exclusive historical video content
An opportunity to join the radio broadcast heard weekdays at 2pm on America Out Loud Talk Radio
The Dean’s List with Dean Bowen on America Out Loud Talk Radio can be heard weekdays at 2 pm ET. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free Apple, Android, or Alexa apps. Listen to all the episodes of The Dean’s List, available on podcast.