Journal Article

Introduction:

This article is about why children get mathematical anxiety. There are many contributing factors. Gender, the attitude of adults in the home, and the way teachers believe in their students are all factors. In addition, one of the most consistent factors is that children growing up in a low income family will do more poorly. All of these factors are creating a barrier between for many children to mathematics.

Summary:

Children learn the foundations of math within the first few month of being born. A child establishes the foundation of mathematics before he or she can count and add. This is done by interaction with their environment and the adults in their in environment. At first girls tend to have a better idea of what is going on in math. By fourth grade it is shown that boys have better scores on the assessment tests than girls. It also shows that girls tend to have more math anxiety than boys. The expectation of teachers are that boys will do better. This attitude can shape why girls do better because they will start to believe what the adults around them believe in. Most low income families have parents with less education which then leads to a negative attitude about math. This then teaches the child to also have a negative attitude.

Reflection:

This article was very shocking to me because I had no idea that this was a real issue because of the simple fact I never experienced the issue. I realized I am an exception because I come from a single parent home where my mother did not attend college. One of my favorite subjects is math and I have always been really good at understanding this. My mom is the complete opposite, not being good at math, but she never discouraged me. It only made me work harder because I didn’t have someone to tell me the answer. One thing I didn’t believe was how the teachers treated