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Tag: Mathematics

  • WAEC Registrar harps on importance of mathematics

    WAEC Registrar harps on importance of mathematics

    The Registrar, West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Dr Iyi Uwadiae says the knowledge of Mathematics remained indispensable for further studies and national development.

    Uwadiae said this in his keynote address at the 54th Annual Conference of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria (MAN).

    The theme of the conference is: Mathematics as Key to Sustainable Change in Growth and Development.

    According to him, the essence of Mathematics education at both the basic and Senior Secondary school levels includes raising individuals that will comprehend, analyse, synthesise, evaluate and make generalisations in order to solve Mathematical problems among other skills.

    “Mathematics provides a powerful and universal language that is appropriate when communicating Mathematics ideas, reasoning and findings both orally and in writing, especially in this 21st century.

    “The progress of a nation is measured in terms of its ability to meet the needs of its citizens.

    “Every nation therefore makes concerted efforts to meet these needs in the most effective and efficient manner.

    “Nigeria is a developing nation and that is why it is still grappling with poverty, hunger, overpopulation, unemployment, diseases and many others and therefore, a lot needs to be done to tackle these setbacks and make it comparable with other developed nations.

    “A good foundational skill in Mathematics is therefore sine qua non to improvement in the various sectors and therefore as a subject, it should be given its pride of place in the school curriculum.

    “There is no doubt that education us a tool for national develooment. The knowledge and skills required for such development are acquired from the carious subjects and courses studied in school,” the WAEC boss said.

    Uwaduae added that Mathematics equips students with analytical and logical minds needed to learn the other subjects.

    He said that student’s achievements in Mathematics enable them to develop self -confidence and become self radiant.

    “It could be argued that the more self-confident a student is, the more easily he or she could learn any subject and the more meaningful contributions they could make to national development,” he said.

    Uwadiae said that Mathematics was the language of Science, Technology and Engineering adding that the developments in these areas and their contributions to global development were made possible by knowledge of Mathematics.

    He noted that understanding Mathematics was essential to understanding the output, usually presented in the form of computer graphics and sequences of contoured fields of the basic variables.

    “Thus, there is need for meteorologists to have good Mathematics skills as the impact of weather forecast on aviation, agriculture transportation , tourism and other allied sectors on national growth and development cannot be ignored.

    “Schools’ ability to improve students’ basic skills in Mathematics and literacy are important to economic growth.

    “Students enrollment measures do not reflect how much students are learning as knowledge capital is what matters in national development and as cognitive skills are highly related to growth,” he said.

    The WAEC boss further added that Mathematics is a prerequisite for admission into tertiary institutiobs for many courses and also for effective performances in some occupations.

    Accordingcto him, the majority of the candidates will not be qualified for admission into higher institution or be effective at work.

    “If such students are not encouraged and motivated to improve in their oerformances, a large number of them may drop out and the desired growth and development in our nation may be difficult to achieve,” he said.

    He however identified the fear of Mathematics, inappropriate teaching methods, inadequate qualified Mathematics teachers as well as inadequate infrastructure as some of the challenges militating against the development and mastry of the subject among the students.

    Uwadiae said that efforts must be made by parents, guardians, counsellors, principals and other stakeholders to change students’ mindsets about Mathematics being a monster subject.

    He also said that admission of students to study Mathematics at the university should be based on academic qualification instead of catchment area.

    According to him, one of the greatest tragedies of the past decades is the collapse of an education system which was founded on sound developmental goals.

    “It is imperative to address the litany of challenges of teaching and learning of Mathematics in the Nigerian education system .

    “The tasks ahead are numerous and daunting It is clear, that it will be imposible for these radks to be tackled by government alone.

    “The involvement of major stakeholders in all sectors of the economy will be essential if the goals and potentials of Nigeria are to be realised,” he said

  • NGO promotes Mathematics

    A non-governmental organisation, Race to Infinity Mathematics game, has devised a game that will attract learners to Mathematics.

    The creator of the game, Mrs Grace Olugbodi, said many a student, run away from mathematics because it is being perceived as a subject too difficult to understand, adding that the game was devised to address this gap.

    According to her, the devise, which is a software, could be inserted into computers, mobile phone sets, and tabs, adding that the more a player answers mathematical questions introduced by the devise, the more his knowledge of the subject increases.

    Olugbodi is optimistic that the game would build confidence in pupils and enhance the development of science in schools. She warned that running away from mathematics could have negative consequence on pupils’ entire career.

    She said: “Some people may want to ask why are we promoting the teaching and learning of mathematics and not any other subject. We are doing this because it gives you confidence. I have been in the promotion of mathematics in the last decade. We will continue to do this to enhance human and societal development.”

    Similarly, the founder of Women for Africa, a female empowerment body and partner in the promotion of the Race to Infinity, Sam Onigbaajo,  explained that  her NGO would reward widows, who single handedly raise their children and honour women who have excelled in various fields, particularly widows who solely support their children’s education.

    African women, he said, have made unquantifiable impacts in the promotion of education, they therefore need to be encouraged and supported in view of their landmark achievements.

    “Women have greater potentials that are not being fulfilled, like what obtained in other parts of the globe. Women enjoy unrestricted access to facilities that would help them develop. One of the ways to develop a society is to support and educate women and if this is done, the trend of development will flow.

    “We are going to support women in terms  of providing the platform in their growth; they are the assets we have to proudly showcase. Our objective is to add value to the life of the African women, promote and encourage the teaching of mathematics which many see as a nightmare.”

     

  • Plateau organises mathematics workshop for 120 students

    Plateau organises mathematics workshop for 120 students

    Worried by the perception of mathematics as a difficult subject resulting in mass failure during examinations, the Plateau government has organised an arithmetic workshop for students in public schools.

    According to Mr Joseph Mairiga, the Commissioner for Secondary Education, 120 students are participating in the first phase which began on Monday in Jos.

    “The workshop is aimed at instilling confidence in the students during mathematics examinations; we intend to do that by guiding them on how to understand and solve given problems,” he said.

    Mairiga said that the workshop, organised in collaboration with the National Mathematics Centre, Abuja, has the theme: “ABACUS Mental Arithmetic/Mathematics Improvement.”

    “The programme is designed to remove nervousness in students when tackling mathematics because their poor performance at examinations is worrisome,” he said.

    He explained that the workshop was a pilot scheme with 120 students drawn from two schools in Jos North Local Government Area.

    “We intend to organise subsequent workshops, either annually or biannually, because mathematics is a core subject for all disciplines,” he said.

    The commissioner listed focal topics to include Area of Plane Shapes, Directed numbers, Construction and Factorization, among others.

  • Why there is mass failure in Mathematics, by don

    A professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), Medinat Salman, has identified lack of frequent practice, inadequate grasp of mathematics’technical language, poor mathematical background of the students and influence of parent on the child’s career choice as factors affecting performance of students in Mathematics in the Senior School Certificate Examinations by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and National Examinations Council  (NECO).

    Others include incompetent handling of difficult mathematics topics by teachers, poor pedagogical approach or strategies, non-involvement of learners in practical classroom activities and failure on the part of teachers to relate mathematics to real life activities.

    Salman was delivering the 168th inaugural lecture of the University of Ilorin (Unilorin), Kwara State entitled: ‘Language and problem solving: The mathematics education links.’

    She said: “The implication of this finding is that the teaching of the subject is not being handled by qualified teachers. Hence, students dislike the subject and this leads to poor performance at this level and other higher levels of education since a poor foundation had been laid at the primary level.”

    She continued: “From my researches I have deduced the fact that the mode of instruction, especially at both primary and secondary levels of education remains overwhelmingly teacher-centred, with greater emphasis on the use of the lecture mode of instruction and textbooks rather than engaging students in critical thinking across subject areas and in applying the knowledge acquired to real life problems.

    “It is the teacher’s competence, ability, resourcefulness and ingenuity through effective utilisation of appropriate language, methodology and available instructional materials that could bring out the best from the learners in terms of academic achievement.”

    Salman, therefore, recommended that only professional teachers should handle the teaching of mathematics at all levels.

    “The ministries of education should organise regular trainings workshops and seminar for mathematics teachers at primary and secondary school levels. There is also the need for the ministries of education to get periodic feedbacks from researches conducted on challenges facing the teaching and learning of mathematics from faculties of education in Nigerian universities to assist in the implementation of the recommendations made from such studies,” Salman added.

  • Prof reveals why students fail maths in WAEC, NECO

    Prof reveals why students fail maths in WAEC, NECO

    The Chief Executive Officer at the National Mathematical Centre (NMC), Prof. Stephen Onah, has blamed dismal performance of students in WAEC and NECO examinations in successive years on unqualified teachers in Mathematics.

    Onah disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja that school proprietors draft non-professional teachers into teaching senior secondary students Mathematics for such important examinations.

    According to him, another factor responsible for poor performance of Nigerian students in Mathematics is the high standards maintained by WAEC and NECO with unqualified mathematics teachers teaching the subject.

    “The other factor is that because there are no enough hands to train students in this discipline persons from different areas of study even outside science-based areas are brought to teach the subject.

    “Because the WAEC and NECO which are of international standard will not lower their standard because Nigeria has not enough hands or qualified teachers to train its students.

    “They will always maintain their standard and so if we are not living up to that standard, that explains our poor performances,’’ he said

    The professor held the view that when the number of teachers is not equal to that of the students’ population effective teaching becomes a problem.

    He called for an increase in the incentives given to mathematics teachers, saying lack of motivation for teachers in critical subjects such as Mathematics is very common in nation’s system of education.

    Onah lauded the efforts of the current government at improving the quality and methodology of teaching at the different strata of education in the country, especially primary and secondary schools.

    The professor noted that there has been an improvement in both quality and quantity of teachers in Mathematics in the past two years,  but said a lot more can be done to shore up students’ performances in WAEC and NECO.

    “This is because there is some recognition; the teachers are beginning to see that they are being recognised for their work and they are putting in their very best.

    “Again the centre in its own way has been putting up programmes to facilitate the teaching of mathematics,” he said.

    He said the centre had developed mathematics modules on how best the subject should be taught and learned and this would be used throughout primary and secondary schools in the country.

    “ We have also produced a good number of textbooks in their simplified form which, if used or recommended at both the primary and secondary levels the learning of the subject would be better than what it is now”, the professor said.

  • Unilorin students shine at Mathematics competition

    Unilorin students shine at Mathematics competition

    Students of the Department of Mathematics, University of Ilorin have once again made the institution proud at the 8th edition of the National Mathematics Competition for University Students (NAMCUS 2016), held recently at the National Mathematical Centre Abuja.

    The University team emerged the first runner up (Overall 2nd best institution) out of about 30 institutions that participated in the competition.

    The team also garnered one gold and three silver medals based on their individual performances.

    Speaking with our correspondent, a member of the Unilorin Team, Raheem Ridwan Lekan said: “The competition is indeed an eye opener, it has really exposed us to many aspects of Pure Mathematics, and we are happy and thankful to Almighty God that we didn’t let the University down at the end of the day”

    The University team has always been among winners in the previous editions of the keenly contested competition, emerging the overall best and first runner up in the 2014 and 2015 editions respectively.

    Other participating institutions in this year’s competition include: Federal University of Technology Akure (Overall best institution), University of Uyo (Second Runner up), Bayero University Kano (Third Runner up), University of Lagos and Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Osun State University.

    The University contingent led by Dr. K. Rauf and included Raheem Ridwan Lekan, Ogunkunle Oluwasegun Abiodun, Adeyemi Adeoye Damilare and Ayoola Faith Mobolaji

     

  • Stress and mathematics

    Life is finite in every aspect.  There are 24 h a day and so many years in a life span.  The body is finite in the energy is has to spend.  The mind is finite in what it can perceive.  The emotions are finite in what they can endure.  The passions are finite in what they can express.

    Stress is overshooting of one’s finiteness.  Stress can be precipitated from within oneself or from outside of oneself.  Environmental factors are important to watch and control as they can become destructive stressors.

    The sights in the streets of Lagos this first week of April 2016are disparaging, Nigerians being blessed with crude oil as their birthright.  Long queues of vehicles are formed outside petrol stations, some stretching as far as the eye can see.  Some petrol stations are crammed with people and jerry cans alongside cars in an obvious confusion and chaos.

    There are outbursts of anger here and there and people flinging each other’s jerry cans into the air.  Drivers engage in a battle of words.  Desperation begets feuds.

    “I queued for four hours to fill my tank” a colleague told me. Let us do the mathematics: four hours times at least 200 cars (persons) per petrol station times so many petrol stations times five days a week.  That is a colossal number of hours of potential work and productivity and income generation lost but that is an economic matter.

    When you need to go somewhere in this time of crisis, you think about routes that don’t have a petrol station along the way.  One would have thought that one or two policemen or traffic wardens or some special scouts would be stationed around every large petrol station or on the streets with several petrol stations near each other to maintain flow of traffic undisturbed by buyer queues.  Rather,cars en-route end up burning fuel in senseless “go-slows” and traffic jams caused by petrol station-chaos.  Let us do the mathematics:  so many cars held up in traffic jams burning so many liters of petrol without going anywhere on so many streets seven days a week means how much petrol wasted and what is the cost of that petrol burnt for nothing? And how much pollution into the air, and how many people stressed up and how many hours of potential productive income generating work lost?  But that is an economic matter.

    If you are doing intellectual work, working on some deadlines, competing with global partners, etc., you don’t want to be caught in those distressing traffic jams that make you spend 2h on a twenty minutes trip.  Now let us do the maths again… how many work hours lost, business opportunities blown, investments sunk, frustrations piled up, mental agonies…

    And when you get home and there is no electricity, let us do the maths again.  And when you want to travel or buy important goods for your business and there is no official forex and you are forced to go to the black market, let us do the maths again.

    In my ten years of working in the USA, I observed that Americans do the maths.  They do the maths of yesterday, they do the maths of today, and they do the maths of tomorrow and they are one of the greatest economies in the world.  They are not without their own stresses, but usually not senseless stress.

    Stress is unavoidable in life.  We meet many stresses along our way but they should be profitable stresses.  Senseless stresses are a curse that Africans do not need.  To avoid senseless stresses we need to do mathematics, before, during, and after.  To get out of poverty and economic crises, we do not need magicians, we need mathematicians.  There is a mathematician in every human being who thinks of the cost; who thinks of the cost of causing confusion, who thinks of the cost of cheating, who thinks of the cost of greed, who thinks of the cost of selfishness, who thinks of the cost of corruption, who thinks of the cost of disorder, who thinks of the cost of laziness, who thinks of the cost of carelessness, who thinks of the cost of waste, who thinks of the cost of stupidity, who thinks of the cost of hatred, who thinks of the cost of ideology…

    Governments need a lot of mathematics, politicians need a lot of mathematics, CEO’s need a lot of mathematics, parents need a lot of mathematics, pastors and imams need a lot of mathematics, doctors need a lot of mathematics, traders need a lot of mathematics, and every citizen should be involved in mathematics.  The first way out of stress is doing the maths.

    Dr. ‘Bola John is a biomedical scientist based in Nigeria and in the USA.   For any comments or questions on this column, please email bolajohnwritings@yahoo.com or call 08160944635

  • NNPC/MPN competition promotes mathematics, science

    Lucille Education Centre, Bonny in Bonny Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State, has won the sixth edition of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)/Mobil Producing Nigeria (MPN) quiz competition.

    The competition was organised in collaboration with the Bonny, Kingdom Development Committee (BKDC) for eight secondary schools in the locality.

    Lucille Education Centre scored 50 points to beat Kings and Queens High School, Abalamabie, Bonny which scored 48 points.

    The Ibitamuno Secondary School, Bonny came third with 46 points, while the Community Secondary School, Bonny took the fourth position with 44 points.

    The winners were presented with prizes, including laptops, while the participating schools got books and cash to enable them provide furniture for their libraries.

    The Field Public and Government Affairs Manager, MPN, Mr Adeyemi Fakayejo, said the firm partnered with BKDC, especially in  education, to help pupils inculcate a culture of learning and improve the quality of education in the area.

    Dr Jude Ben-Stowe, representative of Recreasport Consult Nigeria, which organised the competition on behalf of the sponsors, said the competition’s focus on sciences and mathematics, was a deliberate attempt to stimulate interest in the subjects.

    Se-Alabo Reginald Hart, who chaired the occasion, praised NNPC/MNP Joint Venture for stimulating scholarship amongst the pupils.

  • NTI boss to govts: train Mathematics and Science teachers

    NTI boss to govts: train Mathematics and Science teachers

    Director General and Chief Executive of the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI), Dr. Aminu Ladan Sharehu, yesterday called on governments at all levels to be proactive to the issues of training and retraining of Mathematics and Science teachers.

    He also urged stakeholders to support the training and re-training of the Mathematics and Science teachers, rather than complain about their quality.

    Sharehu made the call, while declaring open a two-week training for Mathematics and Science teachers drawn from four states of the country.

    The training, which is the first Cohort of the third Cycle under the Strengthening Mathematics and Science Education (SMASE) project, drew participants from Nasarawa, Enugu, Osun and Ondo states.

    He said teachers had always been at the receiving end, whenever students performed woefully in Mathematics, stressing that he had not seen much efforts from stakeholders in supporting the teachers to improve in their profession.

    The NTI DG, while commending the Universal Basic Education Boards across the country, advocated for stronger collaboration for the sustenance of the SMASE project.

    He said state governments had not taken advantage of the professionalism and expertise of the NTI in the development of their teachers, saying “the institute is always and ever ready to partner states for the benefit of the country’s education sector.”

    The representative of the Federal Ministry of Education, Mr. Joseph Aguiyi, challenged states to adhere strictly to SMASE guidelines in conducting their local trainings.

    Aguiyi, who is the SMASE National Coordinator, lauded the efforts of the NTI under the leadership of Dr. Sharehu in sustaining the project, after the Japan government had pulled out.

    He said the NTI DG’s effort at rapidly propelling the wheels of the SMASE training qualifies him to be honoured with what he called “SMASE Fellowship.”

    Similarly, NTI SMASE adviser, Prof. Emmanuel Odubunmi, lamented stakeholders’ failure to utilize opportunity given by the SMASE project to improve the quality of teaching and learning Science and Mathematics in Nigerian schools.

    He said the country would remain a dependant of finished products, if it could not develop its production sector.

    He noted that “it is only when there are good students of Science and Mathematics that the country becomes a producer of finished goods.”

    Chairperson of the Enugu State Universal Basic Education Board, Miss Nneka Onuora, expressed the state readiness to always support the National Teachers’ Institute in the training and retraining of Mathematics and Science teachers.

    She said her state knew the importance of Science and Mathematics in the quest for national development, stressing that the state had taken steps to ensure the success of the SMASE project.

    NTI Principal Consultant on quality assurance, Professor Emeritus Thomas Kolawole Adeyanju, said “the answer to overcoming mass failure of Nigerian students in Mathematics is with the teachers.”

  • “Fail in English, fail in all” – and my conditioned envy of Physics and Mathematics

    “Fail in English, fail in all” – and my conditioned envy of Physics and Mathematics

    It took me a long time to discover that the great professional or intellectual envy that I have had of Mathematics and Physics (and of mathematicians and physicists) all my adult life had its roots in my secondary school education, especially with regard to what we used to call “fail in English, fail in all”. I say “envy” deliberately, for I could as well have said “admiration”. This is because while I have a great admiration for all the sciences and scientists, especially the really gifted and conscientious among them, what I feel about Mathematicians and Physicists is envy. Admiration is to envy what possibility is to improbability: we admire what is within our ability to achieve and envy what seems totally beyond our capability to master. This is what I feel about Physics and Mathematics.

    This disciplinary or professional envy is one of the unspoken, subconscious highlights of my life as a professional academic. It is not an envy that drives me crazy with distraction, thank heavens! But it is enough to make me know that it is an unwelcome and perhaps psychologically unhealthy thing. And only this realization has stopped me from quitting my job as a Professor of Comparative Literature and going to enroll in a bachelor’s programme for a combined honors degree in Mathematics and Physics! Ah, “fail in English, fail in all”, what roiling confusion thou hast wrought in my adult intellectual life!

    Of course, since I dare not presume that most of those reading this piece know what “fail in English, fail in all” exactly meant in the lives and careers of all secondary school pupils in my teenage years, I suppose I had better explain the term and its meanings first before attempting to show its linkage with my envy of Mathematicians and Physicists. The phrase literally meant what it proclaimed. Before the creation of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), the examining body for all secondary schools in English-speaking West Africa was based in Cambridge, England. This was the period in which the “fail in English, fall in all” policy was put in place. It meant that if you failed in English, you were automatically denied the passes that you might have recorded in all other subjects for which you might have sat in your school leaving exams. But the real emotional force of the phrase went far beyond literalism. For not only did you automatically fail all other subjects if you failed in English, you had to retake all those other subjects with English in the next round of the Cambridge school leaving exams. Everyone in my generation (and several generations before ours) knew or had heard of hapless, unlucky students who sat year after year for the Cambridge School Certificate Exams and failed year after year only because they had failed in English while sometimes performing brilliantly in the other subjects. Indeed, it was not unknown for the educational prospects of many otherwise brilliant students who could never obtain a pass in English to founder and crash only on the basis of this policy of “fail in English, fail in all”.

    With English being my very best subject, I was of course one of the few very lucky students who were completely immune to the real and imagined traumas of this policy. And I knew it, perhaps knew it in a manner that would ultimately work against me, though I did not know this at the time. All I knew, all most of the other students never let me forget was the fact that I was relieved of the endless hours and herculean efforts that others put into passing in English. This was made all the more blessed for me – so I thought at the time – by the fact that my ease with and in English opened the doors for excellent grades in other subjects like Literature, History, Government and Religious Studies, these being subjects in which competence in English was considered essential and mastery a divine gift. This meant in effect that with English, I was assured of automatic excellent passes in FIVE subjects. All I had to do, all I thought I had to do was perform well in two other subjects and I was okay. In my case, those other subjects were Geography and Chemistry in which I did sufficiently well without ever having really had to apply myself rigorously to their specific demands as academic subjects.

    At this stage in this piece, perhaps it is necessary for me to pause and explain the colonial basis of this “fail in English, fail in all” policy as this was an absolutely crucial aspect of general educational policy in the colonies of Great Britain. On the surface, this colonial dimension was merely apparent; it did not loom large in our consciousness. English was the medium of instruction in all subjects and this was the reason why a pass in English was compulsory, not because English was the language of our colonizers, the language of our cultural and linguistic tutelage. This is what we were told. And it is necessary to point out that we were given this rationalization of the policy by black, Nigerian and not white, English teachers. But dig a little deeper into the historic context and the impregnable colonial basis of the policy was revealed. For instance, it never occurred to us until after the policy had been relaxed or completely retired why students who failed in English had to redo ALL subjects over again, including even subjects in which excellent passes had been recorded. I mean, why did they not simply have students who had failed in English retake only English? What was the point of making such students retake every single subject if the whole basis of the policy was not to make English the language of colonial triumphalism?

    Almost a half century later I see it now, but I must confess that I did not see anything wrong as such with the policy when I was one of its few lucky beneficiaries. I was sympathetic to its victims, especially the students who we thought were “wizards” in the sciences but who somehow never seemed capable of finding their graces in English, the key that opened the doors to success in many other subjects, the language of the imperial lords of the planet. The worst part of my memory of this period in my life is the realization that the policy was a vital part of the general colonial educational policy of keeping the number of high school products that would or could go on to higher degrees through university education very, very low. And indeed, it was not until WAEC replaced Cambridge as the examining body and students could combine passes in the West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) with passes in the General Certificate of Education (GCE) that it became possible for university education to be available to thousands of high school leavers that could never have got past the iron gates of “fail in English, fail in all”.

    How does this all connect with the besotted envy of Mathematics and Physics of my intellectual adulthood? Well, I must emphasize the fact that what I see now with great clarity I simply did not see, did not comprehend then. For I realize now that  deep down, I must have felt a deep fascination with these two particular subjects. This may have been because they were the two subjects that I found the most challenging, the most resistant to my efforts, not to achieve mastery but to get a bare, working knowledge of their “mysteries”. There was a rather funny and poignant way in which this was manifested: the brightest students in Mathematics and Physics envied my consistently excellent performance in English and plainly showed it; but clothed in the marvelous cloak of English, I could not and did not show them my envy of Mathematics and Physics. However, I could not hide this truth from myself, even if I wanted to – which I didn’t. For I knew only too well how I often secretly leafed through the pages of Mathematics and Physics textbooks marveling at the strange and endlessly fascinating “language”  that I found in those textbooks. And I knew only too well the tremor that coursed through my whole body when the “wizards” of Mathematics and Physics among my classmates held their own against our teachers in these subjects.

    In my adult intellectual life, I of course came to a much better understanding of these aspects of the great miseducation that that “fail in English, fail in all” policy had wrought in my life as a professional academic. Permit me to become rather sentimental in my expression of this pathos. I think I was/we were all born into this world to have a working knowledge of Physics and Mathematics, to avail myself/ourselves of their incredibly rich methodologies and procedures for understanding the physical laws of the universe and the logical, abstract relations between numbers, phenomena and things that we cannot easily perceive with only our eyes and the other sensory organs. I was/we were born into this world to penetrate the veil that hides super-small things and relationships from our perception. But that accursed “fail in English, fail in all” policy made it impossible for me to realize these things for which I was born into this life to know and appreciate from the closeness of, if not of an expert, then of a competent amateur. How did this happen, you ask?

    You see, I had bad teachers in Mathematics and Physics. But this did not bother me in the least – until it was too late. If I had had bad teachers in English, I and my classmates would have raised hell and protested mightily. But we did not protest at all against the bad teachers that we had in Physics and Mathematics. Indeed, now that I think about it, I realize with the shock of recollected memory that the students who were good in these two subjects did not protest either. They were far too busy worrying about passing in English to expend their energies on subjects they knew they could easily pass even without good teachers. When eventually I wanted to protest against the bad teachers that I had in Physics and Mathematics, it was about four decades too late!

    I do not wish to end this piece on a sad, defeated note. If the conclusion that I wish to make is not exactly buoyantly optimistic, it is nonetheless hopeful. Now, I know more about and of Physics and Mathematics than I knew two or three decades ago. For the most part, I have been learning – again – the most basic and rudimentary aspects of these two subjects from scratch and mostly by self-instruction. I shall never get a combined honors bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics, but I am slowly coming to a deep and gratified appreciation of the practical applications of these subjects in modern societies and modern life. That’s enough for me. Q.E.D.

     

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu