When it comes to math, attitude is everything

I’m not going to name names or call anyone out (you know who you are), but if I hear one more educator mindlessly say, “I hate math,” I think I’m going to explode.

I’m not just talking about saying “I hate math” in the teachers’ lounge or at professional-development sessions. I mean right in front of students — at school assemblies, in the hallways and, yes, in classrooms.

The reason for math’s bad rap is that the very same teachers and parents who have psychic scars from their own inability to correctly memorize their multiplication tables in the fourth grade are today completely flummoxed by elementary school kids’ homework.

Contemporary math involves learning alternative ways of performing operations. For instance, multiplication is practiced by using tools like grouping, the Box Method, and a host of other avenues for doing multidigit multiplication.

This causes non-math teachers and parents endless frustration. Just ask cartoon superhero Mr. Incredible, who, in the trailer for “Incredibles 2,” gets angry about not being able to help Dash with his homework and snaps: “Why would they change math? Math is math!”

“They” changed math so that students can internalize basic mathematical concepts and then apply them to a variety of operations — addition, subtraction, multiplication and division — instead of merely memorizing specific facts and methods.

It’s all a part of public education’s push toward shaping critical thinkers and problem-solvers instead of automatons that can mindlessly regurgitate facts.

We could certainly debate the merits of this philosophy (it’s one I love in theory but have yet to see executed well) but this is a little beside the point.

The real point is that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) occupations grew much faster than employment in non-STEM occupations over the last decade (24.4 percent versus 4.0 percent, respectively), and STEM occupations are projected to grow by 8.9 percent from 2014 to 2024, compared to 6.4 percent growth for non-STEM occupations.” It’s important for the youngest among us to learn math better than we ever learned it as kids, and to eventually be able to apply it to problems we can’t even imagine or predict.

Researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine recently made a direct causal link between a positive attitude toward math and achievement in the subject. They surveyed children 7 to 10, on a variety of factors and gave them arithmetic problems and even MRI brain scans. The researchers found that “math performance correlated with a positive attitude toward math even after statistically controlling for IQ, working memory, math anxiety, general anxiety and general attitude toward academics ... Children with poor attitudes toward math rarely performed well in the subject, while those with strongly positive attitudes had a range of math achievement.”

No one is saying that, by itself, positive talk about math is going to boost mathematical achievement. Excellent curriculum, strong teachers and additional supports for struggling learners are absolutely key to reaching kids who may have not had a strong start with numbers.

But, like in other aspects of life, attitude is everything.

So please, whether you teach English (or some other non-math subject) or are a frustrated parent or family member carrying emotional baggage about humiliating childhood math tests, don’t jinx the kids in your life.

If you can’t say anything nice about math, just don’t say anything at all.