You don’t hate math. You hated how it made you feel.
And that’s exactly what’s happening with our children today.
The sighs. The blank stares. The tug-of-war over homework sheets. The “Do I really have to?” before every practice worksheet.
Somewhere along the way, math stopped being magical and started feeling mechanical. But here’s the thing: math itself isn’t boring—it’s brilliant. It’s how we deliver it that’s sucking the life out of it.
The Curse of the Calculator Classroom
Walk into any traditional math classroom, and you’ll see a painfully familiar setup. A whiteboard filled with numbers and formulas. Rows of children solving question after question with a “get-it-right-or-you-fail” energy. A ticking timer on the test. A reward if you get the answer, a frown if you don’t.
Now imagine a child walking into this setup every day. What they learn isn’t just numbers.
They learn that there’s one right way to do things. That speed equals intelligence. That if they don’t “get” it fast, they’re not good enough.
It’s like handing a child a violin and asking them to read sheet music—without ever letting them hear the music.
We’ve turned math into a rote recital, instead of the imaginative, story-filled, brain-stretching language that it is.
Imagine If Math Was Taught Like Art
Think of how we teach painting to children. We give them a canvas. Some color. A story to explore. “Paint your favorite animal” or “Draw your dream house.”
Now imagine math being taught like that.
What if multiplication tables were rhythms in a dance?
What if fractions were taught with chocolate bars shared among friends?
What if algebra was introduced through detective mysteries and coding quests?
A child who hates math in school might happily spend hours calculating damage points in a video game or dividing cookies equally among friends—because in those moments, math is real, urgent, and personal.
That’s the difference. We’ve separated math from meaning.
