Math for All Subjects

There are a lot of problems faced by the students during their academic years. There are more than one issues or reasons to become operative for a student to affect and hinder his or her academic growth and performance. Some of the important issues are like –

1. The memory problem
2. Intelligence inadequacy
3. Concentration deficiency
4. The habit issues
5. System errors

Above list is not an exhaustive one, but includes a few of the most common as well as important issues. 

The memory problems are a great issue for any student of any class and any age. Without the support of good memory, performing good in studies is an impossible task for anyone. 

The same goes with intelligence also. Memory and intelligence are two most important tools for good studies and academic performance. There is no subject in the curriculum where these two faculties are used and are responsible for acquiring knowledge and expertise in the subject. 

One student may have good memory and intelligence, still in many cases we can find him or her to perform very poorly in studies. Parents and teachers remain worried and almost clueless about the reasons. Often the actual reason lies in the level of concentration. 

Concentration is totally a different thing from memory and intelligence. And they do not anyhow control or drive the concentration. But on the other hand, concentration is one of the major driving factors for memory and intelligence. Then what drives concentration?

This question is one of the most intriguing as well as deep questions in the history of mankind. Not only academicians, but even the sages and seers always remained concerned and searched for ways to harness the power of human concentration and also tried to find out ways to increase the same. 

In the quest for concentration, there was some success at the individual level, but not much could have been done for the progress in gross human population level. And as a result, though we have developed much as a civilization, still we have actually retarded as an individual in terms of concentration and its applications. 

Not many teachers know anything about concentration, nor are there many resources available for actual actual learning to use and develop concentration. Our knowledge on this is almost negligible. Still this remains one of the most important driving factors for a human being as a student, as a professional, even as a whole individual. But we do not have any curriculum on this in our schools and universities. Why so? Perhaps we do not have enough knowhow and ideas to prepare a curriculum.

I am not trying to discuss much on concentration in this article. Here I am discussing a way to enhance the academic performance of students. And in this the question of concentration becomes inevitable. To enhance studies a student has to enhance concentration. But that is perhaps the toughest task for a student. And unfortunately there is hardly any properly defined way to achieve that. 

Developing concentration and harnessing the power of it is one of the most complex quests for mankind. Nature has gifted us with some individual degree of concentration. And we use that to our purposes, including education. But the performance of this concentration depends on so many factors at the deepest levels of psychology, physiology and philosophy. We do not have much understanding of the actual working principles and systems, and most often instead of increasing, we actually keep reducing our Nature gifted concentration levels by our wrong notions and lifestyles. 

Too much can be said on concentration, but I do not have much scope over here. But I would like to conclude on concentration with a classic example on how important and also critical it can become in our life and performance. And it goes like this……how many times have we heard that Sachin Tendulkar got out at duck or a very low score due to a concentration break? Or how many times Maradona or Pele missed a sure goal due to lack of proper concentration at the moment? They all are legends in their sports. Still they often suffer so much for lack of proper concentration. So that can underline the role and importance of concentration I suppose. 

Next one in our list is habit. It is true that habit can become a vital component for academic success of a student. But perhaps there is too much hype on the power of habit especially in our academic development area. But I have a somewhat different perspective on the issue of habit. Let me explain. 

We can categorize habits into two types, like mechanical habits and inspirational habits. Mechanical habits can be further in many types which also includes reflexive habits, hereditary habits, and so on. Mechanical habits do not play much role in academic developments. Because that kind of habit has minimum connections with faculties of memory, intelligence and concentration. 

For a student, inspirational habits earn the most value in performance. Such way, he or she can involve all the higher cognitive abilities in a habitual manner. Thus for best results, a student needs to minimize the use of mechanical habits and maximize the use of inspirational habits for betterment of academic performances. Otherwise with just mechanical habits one can become a cramming machine at most and that also due to the pressure of examinations. Is that a desirable condition for actual academic benefits? 

The next problem is systemic. That is associated with the system of studies. Teachers have to do more than students in this issue. Still students, especially smart students can have much to do in this also. Just he or she has to be smart enough. 

As we can see there are multiple problems to deal with for an assured benefit in a student’s academic performance.  A question may arise that we can find many students who are already doing well in their exams even not much aware of the different problem areas. How is that?

I have two answers to this question. First is, not everyone apparently looking as doing good in academics are not actually so. As I have already mentioned a term as cramming machine, we indeed find many cramming machines all around, doing well in examinations but without any significant benefit in the area of educational self development. Well many can be happy with this, or at least contended, but I would like to exclude this as an idea of actual holistic academic development. 

And the second answer is, often we somehow move in a somewhat right direction without giving much thought to the underlying systems. That happens in almost all human endeavors everyday all around. We can see so many businessmen doing ok or even good in business without significant studies in business subjects. Similarly we can see many students doing ok or even quite well without significant thought or studies about how to study. That’s quite natural but very chancy as well. It’s somewhat like a gamble with studies……it may click or perhaps it may not.

But to be confidently deterministic we need to find some formal solution as a method or process to establish our strong foothold on the ground of academics. Then what is that? Is there any solution? Or even if one is at all possible accepting the fact that our knowledge in this area is very insignificant and almost primitive? 

Yes it is true that we are far from any decisive solution to this problem. But if we cannot solve it then we can try to optimize. Through ages the education systems all around the world tried to produce optimization models for maximum academic progress and benefits. But hardly any worked well because we do not even have the minimum basic conception or understanding of life and human systems including human learning and education.

Many can argue on this. Apparently it can be shown that a lot of progress has been made. So many universities all around the world, so many different education models. The outcomes are also apparently positive. Both the gross number and rate of production of graduates are ever increasing throughout the world. Professional skills are also progressing with more and more production of engineers and technologists. 

But does that all testifies for holistic academic development or progress? 

Students nowadays are under a one dimensional development which is essentially far away from holistic academic development. And we have got a habit to believe those as the perfect education models and participation.

Thus we can see how there is no perfect solution due to our lack of understanding. But the good news is that there can be an amazingly workable solution. 

And that solution is MATHEMATICS

You must be wondering how that can be. We all know Mathematics as a subject, though a hard one and also a dreary one for many. But you never heard anything like Mathematics can become a cause for overall better performance of a student in his or her academic life.

Though never heard, still this is one of the best truths within this civilization and mankind. Let me ask one simple question……How many students have you seen doing badly in Mathematics but doing pretty well in other subjects like humanities, etc.? And how many students can be seen to do quite well in Mathematics but quite bad in all other subjects?

Actually, in reality, when a student is good in Mathematics, also finds himself much better in all other Science subjects like Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Not only that, such a student also does not do badly in humanities subjects and languages, even if he does not find much interest in those subjects. Somehow he will cope up and ultimately his overall result will be much better. 

The exact reasons for this are too deep and intricate to be discussed over here. And also many of them are globally under research and even more research will be required in days to come. So I will be discussing just the gross ideas and outcomes. 

I have discussed in the above study problem section, about 5 main study related problems. Mathematics can help to cope with all those 5 problems easily and effectively. 

1. The Memory Problem

Daily study and practice of Mathematics can improve anyone’s memory to a significant level. 

Many people think that Mathematics does not have much to do with memory. But the actual fact is not the same. Higher Mathematics requires an immense amount of memory for memorizing complicated theorems and even more complicated proofs. Also lots of solving processes has to be meticulously kept in memory for future applications. 

Even junior class Mathematics requires you to remember theorems, formulae, definitions, descriptions, examples and so on.