The Director General of National Mathematical Centre (NMC), Prof Promise Mebine, has said mathematics phobia can be addressed with the right teachers, books and other necessary tools in teaching and learning the subject.
Prof Mebine, who stated this during an on the spot inspection of the 2021 Nigerian National Mathematical Sciences Olympiad competition, recently, said phobia of mathematics is just a perception and fear where students, from the beginning, made up their mind that maths is difficult to understand.
“Mathematics is a compulsory subject in Nigeria, so it is not something we should think is difficult to do; it is a matter of perception. The problem is they think mathematics is abstract, but it is not,” he said.
The NMC boss said: “If you know mathematics, you know everything and there will be nothing too difficult for you to learn. What I know is we have not been able to go into the level of winning a medal but our students are doing well. Some students did well and they have scholarships outside the country studying mathematics.”
On prizes given to educational competition winners, he advised government to encourage students, saying, “If you see students that are doing a bit okay, what you need to do is to encourage them. In some places, when you are doing well, they pay your scholarship to PhD level but here, are we doing that? How many companies are ready to say let us take it up?”
“I only know two companies that have done that in the past, but government functionaries and agencies should be able to encourage these younger ones by giving them incentives not just for masters’ degree but even for first degree.”
He noted that most students who studied mathematics did not select the subject as the core course to study, but at the end of day, they were given it. He urged parents to encourage their children to study mathematics.
Also speaking, the FCT coordinator of the Olympiad competition, Uchechi Nwagbo, said secondary school students are not interested in mathematics because of the teaching methodology which scares them away from the subject.
She said students participating in the competition have a lot to gain and can use it for assessment as well.
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