Back to basics

I was recently reminded of my maths teacher back at school. Well, I had more than one, so I thought about all of them and how they shaped my interest in their beloved subject. I extrapolated this and thought how maths teachers shape the interest of all their students in this subject, and more often than not, their lack of interest.

It didn't start on a good foot for me. Back at primary school, I found maths difficult. That's not to say that I wasn't good at it but I had to put in a lot of hard work and the answers and concepts didn't come by easily to me. My teacher didn't help much either as she used to pile a lot of pressure on us on getting it right and understanding ideas and logic at the first explanation. Nevertheless, I managed to keep my head above water.

Move on to secondary school. I don’t have any particularly outstanding memories of my maths classes at the beginning so I guessed I did alright but my next teacher was a nightmare. A bully really and I dreaded his classes. Maybe he dreaded teaching me as well because I certainly did not let him get his way with me. I won’t go over this but needless to say that his approach did not inspire me to like his subject.

Come the next teacher. He is the one who changed maths for me from a dull subject made up of dead numbers to a lively subject easy to understand. His explanation made maths seem very easy to me and I would understand the first time about trigonometry and other topics. I then enjoyed solving problems as quickly as possible and I especially remember obtaining 100% in a small test, something that had never happened to me.

I will never forget this teacher. He didn’t have a great personality, able to inspire others nor did he try to befriend his students. He just taught maths. But he did it damned well and made it look easy and fun. I had a tough teacher after him but that didn’t matter anymore because I enjoyed the subject from then on and no teacher would be able to change that.

The final exam at school was supposed to be difficult but I had a lot of fun flying through it and finishing with spare time when I know many others can’t even finish it.

I don’t want to brag too much about how good I am so I will tell you about my artistic skills. Or the lack of it rather! It could be that I am simply not good at this like most people but to stay on topic, I never had arts teachers who made that subject appear interesting. None of them really taught me how to paint. They would just ask us to paint something, to draw something or to create/assemble something. Then give us low marks. No arts teacher ever taught me arts.