How to Help Kids Who Say They Hate Math

Voiceover (00:00): Do kids still need to do math in their heads? The world’s fastest human calculator has a surprising answer. Today, we’re talking about math anxiety and how to help the kids who say I’m just not a math person, fall in love with math again.

This is Fab Idea Friday, episode 1020. This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:22): Today, we’re talking with Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash. Bhanu is the world’s fastest human calculator and founder of Bhanzu, a math learning platform. He won gold at the 2020 Mental Calculation World Championship in London. And now he works to end math anxiety. So, Bhanu, you hold the record as the fastest human calculator alive.

You beat a calculator on stage in front of an audience, but then you walked away from competition. What did winning not give you that made you leave? And why did you shift the trajectory of your career?

Why would the world’s fastest human calculator stop competing and start teaching kids?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (01:04): I spent a lot of time competing in math championships, as you mentioned. And it was very fulfilling in its own capacity. As I looked at this and started doing a bunch of presentations and shows where I was talking about math or showcasing what I was able to do, I realized that kids out there do not really have such a fun experience, sort of familiar experience with arithmetic.

It goes without saying, three out of every four kids across the world have math phobia, which means that there has been a point of time in their entire learning where they said, oh my gosh, this is absolutely something I do not want to do.

This troubles me. This bothers me. And I think it had repercussions on kids careers, it had repercussions on what they took up in their confidence. I took a class, I was invited to one of the schools back in India, in one of my hometowns to say, hey, you are the fastest human calculator in the world or whatever you are, can you go teach this bunch of kids who are absolutely not good at math on how to like be good at it.

And I realized that my understanding of mathematics was so zoomed out, and not at the reality of what kids really needed to learn. I think to create the joy of math learning experience, which I’ve had in front of kids, immediately felt fantastic. I decided that day that I could do two things, which is I could be the face of math, or arithmetic or mental championships, or I could be the face of math phobia and say, how can every kid have an enriching experience with math and no one be left behind?

And I think that started off as a very small thought, but eventually snowballed into me picking up teaching full time.

Vicki Davis (02:38): So, Bhanu, there are those who say, oh, memorizing math facts, that’s not important. And there are those that say, hey, you do need to know some math facts. As someone who is faster than a calculator, what is your stand on the numeracy and the literacy of what we call the math facts?

Do kids still need to memorize math facts if they have calculators and AI?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (03:01): I do agree that there is not a lot of things which I believe a kid should really know or remember to be able to do really well in math. I think I do understand that arithmetic is just one facet of multiple other things which a child needs to know to be eventually good at math.

It brings us to fundamental question of what is someone being good at math? According to me, a kid who is curious to be able to understand why something works, a kid who’s able to axiomatically deduce an argument into its subsections and say, hey, I need to understand why this works.

And if I do not have truth present itself in logical arguments in front of me, I do not trust it. Now that according to me is a phenomenal mathematician. A kid who questions saying, why do you ask me to memorize a bunch of these formula?

So, the kids who I think eventually do really well in math might not traditionally be the kids who phenomenally do at math in school.

Is mental math still worth teaching in the 21st century?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (04:01): So, do kids today in the 21st century need to know how to do mental math? Not at all. As a utilitarian skill, not at all. Would I still advise every kid to try doing mental math in their mind so that they so that they start loving math and get very comfortable with it?

Yes.

Vicki Davis (04:22): Let’s talk math anxiety. Teach technology, but I have to deal with the emotional state of a student before I can teach them anything. You’ve actually talked about how you think AI can’t replace teachers. What is the emotional aspect of teaching as we work to help kids love math?

Why can’t AI replace a math teacher for students with math anxiety?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (04:43): Teaching isn’t as algorithmic as I think a lot of conversation around makes it to be. You’re absolutely right, Vicki. The emotional state of a student is probably the most important variable to maybe predict whether they’ll learn something or not. I hear kids all the time mention, I’m not made for math.

I don’t think I’ve been cut out for math. There’s math people and then there’s the arts people. And these statements are alienating in a way where, kids who actually might have instinctively good skills at math and have all the right acumen to never be able to pick it.

I think a human teacher has the ability to string stories which can make you understand why you need to care. The empathy of a human teacher allows a kid to put out their thoughts and say, okay, here’s where I’m facing an issue. A teacher can inspire a kid into saying, to make the world make sense, you need to learn math the way it is.

Eventually, students between the ages 5 to 15 are going to listen to a teacher who’s inspiring. They’re going to listen to the stories which make sense. They’re not going to buy into the idea of why should I learn integral calculus if I cannot string the story of a world without it.

And that’s not going to happen with watching a bunch of videos or interacting with a layer. It’s never been about competence, right? I would prefer a teacher who is 60% good, but has empathy to an AI which is 100% right all the time and has all the awareness in the world, but cannot speak the language of a kid.

I would prefer the former any day. Yeah.

Vicki Davis (06:37): Well, a perfect example is in my own home. My husband is an engineer, and he wasn’t highly motivated in high school. His junior year of high school, he was a C student in math, but he had taken his SAT, almost made a perfect score on the math section.

His guidance counselor called him in and said, what are you doing? You’re gifted at math. You should look at a technical field, like be an engineer or something. Well, now he’s an engineer. But if that conversation hadn’t happened, if that human hadn’t looked and said, hey, the data we’re getting in the classroom doesn’t really line up with the data of what this student knows.

Bhanu, what you’re talking about, it took a human to say, let’s throw out the data for a minute. There’s something else going on here in terms of human motivation and capability. We’re becoming so dependent on AI tools and technology. Math tools to tell us a student’s capability.

But what if that doesn’t tell us anything?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (07:38): Yeah, the predisposition of wanting to have complete data to infer on what a kid is doing and what a kid isn’t without having the art of looking at what they’re capable of doesn’t really make you help every kid. After spending a ton of time building assessments for kids, right?

We’ve seen that a test itself does not tell anything about the level of the kid because the motivation of the kid on the day of giving the test is a very big variable, you assume. I cannot place you in a certain level and say that you’re at grade 6 level or you’re at high school level by just looking at the solutions of your exam because you might not know the facts today but you might be a very quick learner.

How can a teacher tell whether a struggling math student is actually a quick learner?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (08:19): So, just looking at the test score might not tell me where you are right now in the skills which are to be measured. If as a teacher, I ask you three questions you do not understand how to solve, I explain to you how to solve that math question in a minute.

And if you’re able to pick it up, then you’re a highly independent learner. A test will never understand or evaluate whether you’re an independently quick learner. A test only takes a slice of life, right? It just tells, here’s where you are and here’s the reflection of where you are today.

It doesn’t measure your ability to learn. It doesn’t measure with your ability to pick up. It doesn’t measure your ability to learn something and immediately implement it. So, is testing all about just facts? Is data all about knowing what you know? Or is it supposed to be about how quickly do you learn?

Are you able to infer? Are you able to comprehend? Are you able to have retention? Are you someone who can recall?

What happens when a placement test puts a student in the wrong grade level for math?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (09:13): The frameworks in which you measure educational progress are so binary in nature. Doesn’t really work because I’ve met a kid like just not too long ago, just a few months ago. The kid on their test was placed in grade 5 level. The kid who was in grade 8 in school was placed in grade 5 level because of a test.

Because the kid absolutely did not do well in the exam. Because the kid never really learned some of the concepts which are at grade 8 level. It took a teacher 2 minutes to explain them a concept and the kid was able to pick it up.

Vicki Davis (09:46): Wow.

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (09:48): Do you place them in grade 5 level or do you spend some time into saying, here’s a quick learner, let me accelerate their path. A data and an exam is never going to give you that. An AI-inferred assessment is never going to give you that.

Vicki Davis (10:00): Bhanu, you described traditional math teaching as here’s a definition, please learn it. Here’s a formula, please remember it. Here’s a bunch of questions you’ll have to solve. So where does that kind of math learning lose a child?

Why do so many students lose interest in math before high school?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (10:14): If music were taught the way math is taught, if music were taught the way math is taught, For four years, the music teacher will make you listen to music. The fifth year, the music teacher will ask you to write down the note you hear.

The sixth year, you’re going to learn what the notation is. You’re going to learn what the piano notations are. The sixth and the seventh year, you’re asked to hum a little. And by the ninth year, if you survive music, you’ll be made to listen to a song.

Like that’s how math is taught. And by the time in the ninth year,

How do I explain base ten and place value so young kids understand it?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (10:52): I don’t want to hear a song anymore. Now, I think we just tell the kids, hey, here’s how numbers work. But we’ve never told them why does the number one zero come after nine? Why does, why do we become two digits? It’s because we have 10 fingers.

Had we had only six fingers, we would have counted in a, you know, in a, in a basic system. I’ve seen seven-year-old kids immediately pick binary. I’ve seen seven-year-old kids immediately understand, Oh, what if I have only one finger? Oh, then I do on and then I do an off.

And I say, oh, exactly. That has a name to it. So I think we don’t spend time as education at large to make kids come to their own inferences. I’ve broken a bunch of world records, spent a lot of time trying to say you can do a lot of mental math in your head.

Do I think it’s a skill which kids need to have? Absolutely not. Right? But at the same time, it’s very similar to saying, does everyone need to be Usain Bolt? No, they don’t. Does everyone need to cover a hundred-meter track race in nine seconds?

No. But it’s healthy to keep running. It’s healthy to run. It makes you fit. So I think of doing and being introduced to good math as a kid as a definitive way to keep your mind fit, and I think that’s all we need in the ages ahead.

We are not teaching them math as a skill. We are teaching them how to think. That’s a skill which can get scarcer and scarcer as time progresses.

Vicki Davis (12:22): I know those math teachers that are listening to you right now, what’s something that they can do when they arrive at school today to try to help those kids re-engage in math?

How do I get students who hate math to care about it?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (12:35): You need to speak the language of the kid to understand why they don’t think they can appreciate math. I’ve seen a lot of kids who say, I love Roblox, I love my Minecraft, and I love my Nintendo Switch. But that’s all I care about.

I don’t really care about math. So I think connecting the space in which they care about to the math around it has been proven to be one of the best ways you can make someone, make a kid who doesn’t care, probably care a little.

I was working with a group of kids who really were convinced, “I don’t need to learn math in my life.” These were grade 7, grade 8. They said, “No, the world is changing, right? I use ChatGPT for everything. I don’t think anyone needs to learn math.” But I think if you understand what their motivations are and speak their language and give a shot towards explaining them a mathematical concept through the lens of something they care about in their space of interest, you can probably try to reel them in.

Second thing is every kid appreciates a great story. And that’s probably the right case of using AI, which is if I can write down, and explain through them a story where the stakes are very high, and where, let’s say, a skill they’re going to learn today changed the life of an individual, create a scene where not knowing that math concept is going to be so distressing that the kid is hooked.

Think of this almost as a play you’re writing, right?

How can I use a story to teach trigonometry?

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (14:02): A quick example would be, you can have probably 50% of the class care about you when you say, here’s what trigonometry is. You can find the three sides of a triangle by knowing only two of them and one angle. Change the conversation into saying we are in a war.

There is a Greek war going on. There’s a bunch of enemy ships coming toward me. I have nothing else to do. I need to survive today, and I need to fire my cannon, and I need to make sure I win. We know only the angle and the side of this.

There is one chance. Can I take a chance at it, or is there a way in which I can solve this? Now you need to help this one person get to the answer. A lot more immersive than just saying, hey, let me solve for the third side.

There’s been no kid who I’ve not talked about on statistics of a Pokémon card who didn’t appreciate math class afterward.

Vicki Davis (14:59): We’ve been talking with Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, the world’s fastest human calculator and the founder of Bhanzu, a math learning platform. Thank you, Bhanu.

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash (15:10): Thanks a lot, Vicki.

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