Hello Reader

You might be wondering who I am.

If you are, I'm also wondering who you are.

WHO AM I?

I'll go first. My name is Jonathan and I had math anxiety for a long time. But you know what? My Class 11 math teacher Mr Anderson tol me "Don't worry Jonathan! Mathematics is only confusing if you think about it."

That's right! We are told NOT to think. Instead we are told to follow the LAWS. Instead we are told to FOLLOW THE RULES. It's almost as it we were studying legal matters, not math!

So, as children we go two ways. We either try and understand how maths works. I'll call this the DEEP RIVER MIND.

Or, we just do what we're told and act like trained puppies doing this and doing that because our teacher told us to - not because it made sense! Let's call this the RAPID RIVER MIND.

I suspect the DEEP RIVER MIND students get lost trying to make math connections that do not make intuitive sense.

Meanwhile the RAPID RIVER MIND students have no emotional inverstment in the understanding. They'll just obey the teacher and move on, fast!

DEEP RIVER MINDS move slowly because they try to make deeper more profound connections. When they are told something that makes no sense whatsoever, they will have cognitive dissonance or be torn between two beliefs. Do they believe their eyes or do they believe their teacher? The teacher must be right, so my eyes must be wrong and I must be stupid!

Looking back I was a DEEP RIVER MIND because I tend to dwell on things a long time and be a slow learner as a result. Yet my being a slow learner was NOT understood as being s deep thinker. I failed math at school and repeated a year of school and learned to hate math. Yet, later on I came to realise that I was a great thinker given enough time. Yet exam pressures and needing to learn too much in too little time makes math way to stressful. It's best learned in a fun way that suits the SLOW yet DEEP MIND!

I suspect that many of you are WAAAYYY smarter than others have led you to believe. They breezed through math because they were RAPID RIVERS and RAPID RIVER MINDS ARE SHALLOW! It's much easier to just do what you're told in math and never challenge your teacher.

My story could have been your story. I was just an average person who feared and failed math - like so many of us. Yet I ended up deciding to fix math education on the 18 March 1983. And so from that day, almost 2000 weeks, I just kept going deep, then deeper then deeper again.

I am still NOT a fast learner. Yet I have done more homework on the foundations of maths than just about any math education professor you will find. At one point I didn't just double check an idea I wanted to fact check. I researched it in 16 different languages spanning more than 2000 years of history.

Now, many call me Dr or Prof, yet I am self-taught. It is kind of funny that despite that fact, professors get many new ideas from me - as you will as well. So, what can you tell me about YOU? Are you happy with math and enjoy it and just want to learn more because it brings you joy? Or could you be like I was, anxious about math?

WHO ARE YOU?

What do YOU want from me?

What do you need to know?

Why are you registed for my math help?

I really do want to know more about YOU. The more real-life experiences I read the better I will be able to help you go from feeling a ZERO to feeling a HERO.

Or, if you like math, tell me why?

I think I have personally replied to everyone who respond to my previous emails.

And I will do my best to respond directly to you.

So hit REPLY, jot down a few sentences about your life asit relates to mathematics. High and lows warts and all. It's time to get it off your chest! Tell me that story! I;ve got plenty of math war stories of my own. I've feld tte sadness, the shame the anxiety - yet most of all - the REAL JOY of knowing, it was NEVER MY FAULT. And so I got really good at creating NEW math!

I really just needed the correct explanations as a child and yet, they were denied to me.

By the end of July my goal is to have you feeling different about math.

Soon we'll be on our way.

So hit reply.

Type.

... I'll be here.

Jonathan

P.S. I have NOT proof read this or properly spell checked it. I am writing to you from the heart. My brain will get involved later!

P.P.S. If you'd like to, you can watch an interview Sanjay Dixit did with me.

Or one with Meena Das Narayan...

Or you can read and watch an interview with Rajiv Malhotra.

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