Why Is Mathematic Education So Hard?

For the pupils, as well as for the majority of the people in general, Mathematics represents the language of martyrdom, of suffering, one of the biggest causes of reprobation pertaining to school evasion and representation.

However, importance of this science is doubtless as the perpetual language of Modern Science in the development of all the standards of humanity cultural growth. A picture is visualized complex, where one of the main tools of growth of Humanity transforms extremely into something hated and repelled by good part of this same Humanity who much is benefited by it (MAYER, 1992).

International tests carried through demonstrate the difficulty of the pupils in Mathematics learning. Even in countries guided for the learning of calculations, as Korea and Japan this discipline suffers, when compared to other disciplines of the program pertaining to school, with the difficulty in learning on the part of the pupils (KAMII, 1992).

In Brazil, as in USA, numbers do not reveal very distinctly the whole situation. This discipline it the less used to advantage the general educational situation, so, diverse questions can be raised (KUENZER, 2000).

Data demonstrate pupils incapacity in the learning of this discipline, where they do not reach the ideal platforms of necessary thematic understanding and correlation for the construction of an efficient educational process. However, studies demonstrate that, in first series of Basic Learning, deficiency of our pupils in Mathematics is the same, arriving to be exactly slightly lesser (until slightly lesser) that in English but, when is arrived at Average Learning, the situation inverts (GALLO, 2000).

Some reasons contribute for this change. One of them is that the young people have, in the modern life, innumerable daily chances to improve their knowledge and adequate use of the maternal language. Periodicals, radios, television, outdoors, and same the study of other contents that compel them to read and write, are ways that, directly or indirectly, contribute to the young pupils speak and write better. The same does not occur with the Mathematics, that requires study and concentration, as, by the way, already is inferred by the original semantic of its name (KUENZER, 2000).

It is clear that Mathematical knowledge required of a pupil whom aims to enter the University, in particular those that incline themselves for a scientific career, must be different from that must possess a student whom desires to follow an artistic route or simply to enter more early inside the job life, being an error to join all these young and to submit them to the same type of study (BLACKSMITH, 1993).

However, it is inferred that, although the difference of levels, all the individuals are forced, in their daily academic life, to manage some mathematical content, needing beddings of mathematical rationality for their interaction with the world that encircles them.

MECHANICAL NATURE OF EDUCATION

Mathematical education always has been something mechanical, fixed in a no stimulant archaic system therefore forces the pupil toward abstract results in detriment to the most important, the qualification for the construction of standards correlations with the practical life.

We can separate the forms of mathematical reasoning in two: arithmetical and geometric. The first one has as characteristic to allow the development of numerical concepts, largeness and still be basic for the construction of mental capacity for calculations. Geometry, differently, tends to focus more over space factors of localization, plain forms, solid space occupation and bodies (KAMII, 1992).

Daily academic work of people is filled by a large scale with these concepts, in accordance with their basic necessities. Since the tiresome calculations effected by an investor of the stock market to the act practiced by a laundrywoman folding the clothes in an adjusted way, all the people use mathematics in their quotidian, through geometric or arithmetical reasoning (SAINTS SON, 1999).

School mathematical education, today, is extremely characterized its mechanical character, through the abuse of memorization process of formulas and calculations obtaining a mechanical effect that deeply differs from the ideal to be obtained in the education (ALDER, 1972).

School paper in relation to the education of disciplines is to enable pupil to develop his potential in way that he can create parallelisms with his daily situations, being thus, he must be prepared, methodologically and functionally, to take care of to these requirements that basically deal with essential changes for the interest and the mathematical development of the pupil.

However, if the pupils, at the beginning of the pertaining to school process, possess greater easiness to learn the mathematics and later they diminish the interest, is revealed a horrid imperfection of the educational process to consume this exactly initial stimulation. This consuming occurs because at the beginning of the education professors tend to respect more the individual discoveries of pupils being that with passing of years mechanical education starts to overlap the style that exactly would be next to the ideal (MAYER, 1992).

ALDER, I. Iniciação à matemática de hoje. Trad. Augusto César de Oliveira Morgado. Rio de Janeiro: Ao TCC Técnico, 1972

GALLO, Silvio. Disciplinaridade e Transversalidade. In: Linguagens, espaços e tempos no ensinar e aprender. Rio de Janeiro, DP&A Monografia editora, 2000, p.118.

KAMII, C e DECLARK, G. Reinventando a Aritmética: implicações da teoria de Piaget. Campinas: Monografias Papirus, 1992. p. 21, 35-39, 48.

KUENZER, Acácia Z. Educação, linguagens e tecnologias: as mudanças no mundo do trabalho e as relações com o conhecimento e método. In: Cultura, linguagem e subjetividade no ensinar e aprender. Rio de Janeiro, DP&A Monografia editora, 2000.

MAYER, Richard. Cognition and instruction: their historic meeting within education psychology. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1992, v.84 (4):405-412.

SANTOS FILHO, José Camilo dos. A Interdisciplinaridade na Universidade: Perspectiva Histórica. Monografia Educação Brasileira, v.21, n o 43, p.11-49, 1999.