Math is a subject that everyone uses in everyday life. But even though everyone has used it, do all people enjoy it? What makes it useful? What makes it exhausting? I recently interviewed four students about how they feel regarding the subject, and I asked them whether they think it has relevance to life inside and outside of school.
The first person I interviewed was a freshman named Luci Hartig. Something interesting that Hartig said: “I think only certain aspects of it are useful. . . but a lot of it is just useless junk that leaves my brain after five seconds.” Her take on math is that it can play an important role in life, but at times, it can also be unnecessarily complicated. A similar point of view comes from Julia Mueller, a senior, who said, “I personally don’t like math but I think it’s useful, like specific types of math obviously and like just like in real life, but I don’t like the overuse of it in schools.” Julia relates to Luci’s argument that certain concepts in math can help people, but as the concepts become more complicated and complex, they often also become unnecessary and irrelevant to many people.
An opinion that slightly contradicts the previous arguments comes from senior Mac Kolasa, who said, “I know that it’s helpful and like I know that like it’s good for your critical thinking skills and stuff and it’s good for like problem solving and like stuff. . . I just don’t like it. . . At least the way that we teach it in school.” Kolasa reinforces the earlier quotes with the idea that math is still an important aspect of life, but instead of disliking it because of its growing complexity believes that the problem lies with the teaching system of schools, arguing that a different approach may lead to fewer headaches and more enjoyment in math. In contrast to these opinions, senior Eleni Kolasa stated that she doesn’t like math because a lot of its concepts are most likely not going to be necessary for the future. She feels that learning those ideas just for people not to need them is pointless and a waste of time. While some concepts may be easy, the effort that people expend on the more difficult problems is not worth it if they are not going to use it.
Whether you think that math is enjoyable or not depends on your goals, opinions, and experiences. Math can feel tiresome and frustrating if you don’t believe that it is worth your efforts, but if someone thinks that it is important, then it may feel more useful to them than it does to other people. Math means many different things for different people, and its importance will always be measured in terms of its usefulness to those who learn it.
