When you still enjoyed your music using a gramophone, the needle would get to a position where, for some reason, it would get stuck and would repeat the same notes of music over and over.
So, from time to time, you needed to wipe the record of dust and clean the needle. A scratched record was one of the most annoying things when you were enjoying the likes of Brook Benton, Jim Reeves, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagner, and not forgetting Mahlathini and the Mahotela Queens.
Records were replaced by cassettes and then CDs, and now, too the CDs, as you can download music onto a memory stick. Like a stuck record, the myth that our children cannot conquer maths is repeated over and over.
Alexandra’s own maths wizard, Kholofelo Mohale has proved that maths can be conquered and many others have done before her, but this myth seems to have more than the nine lives of a cat, as it continues to live long well after its expiry date.
Our children only need to learn to apply their mind properly and be determined come what may to solve a complex maths problem, and then emerge as the victor. Victory is sweet as they always say.
What I really want to highlight is that this myth about maths being difficult exists only in our children’s heads. They block their thinking ‘kop’ by merely dismissing something as difficult.
It’s like adults today. They will tell you how difficult it is to operate their smartphones as they find it difficult to hop from one app to another, yet it is as simple as ABC.
You just need to play around with the phone and teach yourself. Something self-taught can never be forgotten. It’s like when I am driving to a new place and I have a clever fool of a passenger by my side who keeps telling me to turn, either left, right, or to go straight. By the time I get to my destination, I don’t even know how to get back from where I came from. But if I navigate it on my own, surely I will know how to get back.
